Harbury Supermarket to hold event to say thank you to villagers who showed support after burglary

Preet Kaur and her husband Bob Dhillon are inviting villagers to have free drinks, cake and samosas at the store in Mill Street on Saturday (October 19). from 2pm.

The supermarket was burgled in August with the offenders taking cigarettes, books of stamps and causing thousands of pounds of damage by taking the tills and breaking windows and equipment.

Preet and Bob kept the store open despite the incident but the Post Office counter was closed for about a month.

Shortly after news of the incident got to villagers the parish council organised a collection to help the couple and about £6,000 was raised.

Preet said: "We are holding this event to say thank you to everyone for their support.

"We would have had to close down if it wasn't for them.

The couple had only been running the business for about a year before the burglary took place.

Parish council chairman Tim Lockley is among those who has organised the collection.

He said: ""There's two elements to us wanting to help Gulpreet and Bob.

"We all know them well so there is the personal side of it.

"There is a great community spirit here.

"But we also want to maintain our facilities.

"When a small business in the village gets hit like this then there's a risk that they might have to close.

"These type of incidents are happening quite often now - the thieves aren't amateurs, they know what they're doing and they probably come from quite far away to carry out these raids.

"The knock-on effect of these incidents is that everyone in the village could suffer and we all want to make sure that doesn't happen."