London: Masked burglars stole farm vehicles from King Charles III’s sprawling Windsor Castle estate, which is also home to Prince William and Kate Middleton’s family cottage, UK police confirmed on Monday. According to a report in ‘The Sun’ newspaper, two men scaled a six-foot fence on the night of October 13 and used a stolen truck to break through a security gate while the Prince and Princess of Wales and their children George, Charlotte and Louis, slept at their Adelaide Cottage home on the estate.
The two masked burglars then fled with a pick-up truck and a quad bike that were stored in a barn. "At around 11.45pm on Sunday 13 October, we received a report of burglary at a property on Crown Estate land near to the A308 in Windsor,” Thames Valley Police said in a statement.
"Offenders entered a farm building and made off with a black Isuzu pick-up and a red quad bike. They then made off towards the Old Windsor/Datchet area. No arrests have been made at this stage and an investigation is ongoing," the statement said.
While Buckingham Palace has not commented on the reports, sources indicated that the King and Queen Camilla were not in their castle residence at the time. However, all senior royals have their own special police protection and there is not believed to have been any direct danger to any of the royals who were on the Windsor estate, about 40km west of London.
The 15,800-acre royal estate includes working farms, conservation areas, Windsor Great Park and famous royal landmarks such as Windsor Castle, a popular tourist attraction. The burglary last month marks another security breach of the grounds after a British Sikh man climbed a fence at Windsor Castle armed with a loaded crossbow and claimed he wanted to kill Queen Elizabeth II back in December 2021.
Jaswant Singh Chail has since been handed a nine-year custodial sentence for treason, possession of an offensive weapon and making threats to kill. Chail claimed he wanted to “assassinate” the late monarch as revenge for the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar, according to a social media video that emerged soon after his arrest.
(With inputs from agency)
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