Heartless thieves steal charity cash from Brighton restaurant (From The Argus)

Heartless thieves steal charity cash from Brighton restaurant

12:00pm Saturday 19th January 2013 in News By Emily Walker, Chief Reporter

Thieves ripped a safe filled with charity cash from the wall of a restaurant.

The safe - stolen from the Indian Summer restaurant in East Street, Brighton - contained more than £800 worth of donations.

Raiders broke in through the back of the restaurant before stealing the safe, several bottles of Champagne and the building's CCTV system.

The safe contained £480 that the restaurant had collected for the Chestnut Tree House hospice, another £400 intended for the Streetsmart homeless project plus about £2,500 of the restaurant's takings.

Owner Minesh Agnihotri said: “The police said that once they had got the safe off the wall and out of here it must have been someone who would have known how to crack into it.

“It is not your ordinary burglar who knows how to steal a safe and crack into it.

“It was pretty heavy so it would have taken at least two of them to get it out of here.

“They came in through the back so they must have known what they were doing.

“The saddest thing is the charity money that was taken.

“The police don't hold out much hope of catching them.

“They couldn't even find the point of entry - we had to point that out to them.”

The raid is the second safe to be stolen from a restaurant in the area in recent months.

In October Dermot O'Leary's Fishy Fishy restaurant in East Street was also targeted by raiders who stole the safe. On that occasion the thieves were suspected to have been a professional gang who disabled the alarm before making off with the heavy safe containing around £1,500 in cash.

Police were investigating whether the raid was link to another safe theft from the Heist bar in West Street in June 2011.

No one is believed to have been arrested in connection to either of the previous raids.