India's chess players robbed in Spain

Some of the top Indian chess players, including Grandmaster Sankalp Gupta, went through a torrid time while participating in the recent Sunway International chess tournament at Sitges, Spain, as they lost several valuables after break-ins at their apartments.

The train of unsavoury incidents started on December 19 with a break-in at the Apollo apartment, a property provided by the organisers for participants, where International Master Dushyant Sharma and Sankalp were sharing the accommodation.

This break-in happened when the duo was out of their room and Dushyant lost his passport, laptop and cash from the room.

Though Sankalp was robbed of his laptop and air-pods, his passport was safe.

But that was not the end of miseries for them as the translator interpreted wrongly that the players left the doors and windows open, hinting that the burglary was because of their negligence.

“We rectified this mistake in the report (to the organisers) later”, said Dushyant.

Dushyant, in fact, had to leave the tournament to get the document to come back home.

Interestingly, Sankalp was able to track his air-pods online but the player complained that he did not get any support to retrieve them from Barcelona.

Three days later, Sunway San Jorge Apartment was targeted by the burglars after the last round.

Women's IM Mounika Akshaya and WGM Srija Seshadri were away for an evening walk and IM CRG Krishna was sleeping inside the room while burglars entered the apartment.

Their valuables like laptop and mobile phones were taken away, but fortunately, Krishna was not harmed.

Women's International Master Mounika Akshaya admitted her laptop, Rs 12000 in cash, silver ornaments were robbed from her apartment during the Sunway Sitges Chess Festival 2023, Spain

On December 23, Sunway Arizona Apartments had a break-in when WIM Arpita Mukherjee and WFM Vishwa Shah were sleeping in the bedroom.

Between 2.30 am and 6 am, their laptops, mobile phones and cash were stolen from the bedside tables. Luckily, the players were left unharmed by the perpetrators.

"The organisers claim this happened for the first time in 10 years but while reading reviews on Google, I found out that there have been multiple such break-ins recently," said Sankalp.