The thief, Siddharth Mehrotra, is a graphic designer.
The thief, Siddharth Mehrotra, is a graphic designer. He belongs to a well-educated family and his father used to be a bank manager. After conducting recce of upscale localities, Mehrotra realised that the residential blocks had no intercom system between the guards and residents and vehicles entering the area were not checked. He then made plans to burgle the houses.
Mehrotra and his associate Anurag Singh used to enter the localities and park their car at a safe distance. Mehrotra would ring the doorbell and hide to check if someone opened the door. If no one turned up for a while, he would break into the house while his accomplice kept a watch outside.
Siddharth Mehrotra’s run ended after he was nabbed along with his stash of stolen booty on Monday.
“Since January, many burglaries were reported from upscale areas of south Delhi after which teams led by ACP (Vasant Kunj) K P Kukrety and SHO (Vasant Kunj-N) Gagan Bhaskar were formed to conduct raids,” said DCP (south) Ishwar Singh.
When the raids turned futile, Bhaskar searched for high profile burglars in Delhi-NCR on the internet. Soon he zeroed in on Mehrotra whose physical appearance matched with a thief seen in CCTV footage from one of the burgled houses.
Police have seized gold jewellery worth lakhs, currency in US dollars, Indonasian Rupiah, Nepali Rupees and electric items from the accused men. The trio said that they took to crime to fund a luxurious lifestyle, branded clothes and high-end gadgets.