Theft in Behesht-e Zahra
The Behesht-e Zahra Organization has increased monitoring to reduce social harms and offenses, including flower theft.
To reach Behesht-e Zahra, it doesn’t matter if you travel via Shahid Tondguyan Highway or the Persian Gulf Highway, you’ll surely encounter flower sellers. Children under 5 years old, teenagers, young adults, and elderly men and women over 60 years old stand beside the flower stalls.
We stop by a flower stall and buy a bouquet of roses. We place the flowers on the grave, engage in reciting the Quran and reading the Fatiha, then leave the grave. We haven’t taken a few steps away before we turn back and see no trace of the flower stems. The disappearance of the flowers in the blink of an eye certainly requires expertise, skill, and high speed.
We are still in shock over the theft of the scattered flowers when suddenly we notice a person in tattered clothes collecting flowers from the gravestone. We discreetly observe him from a corner and eventually, after an undercover chase operation, we reach the flower sellers’ stall. The scattered flowers are packed in a small plastic bag and sold for 30,000 tomans. Of course, the flower sellers buy them at a lower price from the thieves, most of whom are foreigners and some are addicts.
The CEO of the Behesht-e Zahra Organization confirms the presence of flower thieves in the cemetery. Mohammad Javad Tajik says this issue of flower theft has existed in the past, and in this period, with the cooperation of the police and colleagues from the social services organization, we are trying to gather the thieves, and with the measures taken, thefts have been minimized.
According to Tajik, in the new urban management period, in addition to increasing 24-hour monitoring by the garrison forces and urban discipline, and increasing the number of surveillance cameras, a night mayor has also been established in this complex.