Police in India went bananas after catching a thief who swallowed a gold chain as they were chasing him — forcing him to eat 40 of the potassium-rich fruits to get at the evidence.
Gopi Ghaware, 25, denied swiping the chain from the woman in a Mumbai fish market last Wednesday, so police hauled him to two hospitals to get X-rays.
Both scans revealed a chain-like object sitting in his stomach, according to The Hindustan Times.
Mumbai police initially gave Ghaware an enema, but the necklace didn’t budge.
Doctors recommended they do surgery to extract it, but on Friday, cops, apparently thinking they were in a “banana republic,” decided they’d get it out of him by forcing him to gobble the fruit.
“He was fed more than 40 bananas throughout the day,” declared Shankar Dhanavade, a senior inspector with the Mumbai police.
“Eventually, the chain was found.”
He added: “We made him wash and disinfect it.”
But the cleaning didn’t make the gold necklace appealing to the victim anymore — she exchanged it at the jeweler for a different chain.
Ghaware had a court appearance on Friday and is still in police custody.
This is not the first time Mumbai police have used the banana method to procure stolen objects.
In July, another necklace was excreted by a man after he was fed 24 bananas and downed several glasses of milk filled with laxatives.