A Bengaluru resident arrested in December 2023 by the Ooty Town police on charges of stealing a rare book The Pirates of Malabar from the Nilgiri Library, has since been acquitted by the judicial magistrate court in Udhagamandalam.

At the time of the arrest, police had said, office-bearers at the 160-year old library were taking stock of books, following the completion of the Ooty Literature Fest in October, when they realised that the century-old book, The Pirates of Malabar and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago, by Colonel John Biddulph, were missing from the library.

One of the office-bearers of the library registered a complaint with the Nilgiris district police who began investigations. A few weeks later, the police were tipped-off about the sale of the book through Instagram. The officers said they tracked down the mobile phone user’s details using resources from the Cyber Crime Cell and traced it to Debnath. He was arrested and brought to the Nilgiris and remanded in judicial custody.

The trial in the case was conducted at the judicial magistrate court in Udhagamandalam since 2024. On September 30, 2025, the judge, D. Ravi, acquitted the man due to a lack of evidence.

(This report has been updated on receipt of the court order)