Afraid of car thieves? Bihar man puts his Scorpio on the roof

What do you do when you have to leave your prized SUV at home and you're worried someone might steal it?

Lock the doors.

Install a CCTV camera.

Maybe ask a relative to keep an eye on it.

Or, if you're a man in Gopalganj, Bihar, apparently you call a crane.

A video that has gone viral shows a Mahindra Scorpio Classic being hoisted several metres into the air and placed on the roof of a two-storey house. The sight is exactly as extraordinary as it sounds: a full-sized SUV dangling from a crane, slowly being manoeuvred over a residential building before being deposited on top.

According to reports accompanying the video, the owner was preparing to travel abroad for work and was worried about leaving the vehicle at ground level while he was away. His reported solution was to put the car somewhere a conventional thief would have a rather difficult time reaching.

The roof.

Reuters Connect footage identifies the location as Mira Tola village in Gopalganj district, under Manjha police station. It identifies the owner as Manoj Yadav and reports that he works in Israel, while his wife was staying at home. However, Reuters Connect also carries a disclaimer saying the underlying video and information supplied by the stringer had not been independently verified.

How do you park an SUV on a rooftop?

The answer, rather obviously, is: you don't drive it there.

The viral footage shows workers using a crane to lift the Scorpio and carefully position it on the roof. Other reports, including NDTV's coverage of the video, also caution that several details — including the exact circumstances behind the decision and the building's suitability for the vehicle — have not been independently established.

And this is where the story becomes considerably less funny.

A modern SUV is a very heavy object. A residential roof is not automatically designed to carry the concentrated weight of a vehicle, and lifting one with a crane requires appropriate equipment, lifting points and safety precautions.

NDTV noted that it was unclear whether permissions had been obtained or how long the vehicle would remain on the roof.

Why not just use a garage?

That, of course, is the question the internet has been asking.

The reported motivation was simple: keep the expensive SUV away from thieves while the owner was abroad.

A paid parking facility, a trusted caretaker, CCTV, GPS tracking or even a particularly determined car cover would all be considerably less dramatic.

But none of them would produce quite the same photograph.

The bizarre parking job has understandably sent social media into overdrive, with users marvelling at the lengths to which some people will go to protect a vehicle.

And perhaps that is the real lesson here.

We usually think of parking as a problem of finding enough space below the house.

This man appears to have solved it by taking the car above the house.

Whether the roof can safely remain a parking spot, however, is a very different question.