Bengaluru: The Madiwala police on Thursday arrested a 32-year-old business management graduate and his wife, a trained air-hostess, for stealing 151 laptops from paying guest accommodations in and around south east division in the past two years.
The police have identified the accused as Sumeer Sharma, a native of Jalandhar in Punjab, was staying in an apartment at Ittamadu near Banashankari III Stage with his wife Rajeshwari, who hails from Honnavara.
Additional Commissioner of Police (east) Hemanth Nimbalkar said that the accused would move around the PG accommodations in the IT hubs of the city including Mico layout, Koramangala, Madiwala, HSR Layout and Adugodi and befriend the security guards of the PG to gain access inside. He would then steal laptops from the rooms that were kept unlocked.
The accused would then hand over the laptops to his wife, who owns SR (Sumeer and Rajeshwari ) Computers in Hosakerehalli. The laptops would be disposed in grey markets of Chennai, Coimbatore, Tiruppur and even some shops in JC Road in Bengaluru.
Nimbalkar said that the accused would only take laptops and IPad which are easy to conceal in a backpack.
Sumeer, who has been unemployed since graduation, confessed that he learnt the “art of stealing” from habitual offender Arun Pathak from Rajasthan in 2015. With the help of his wife he would sell the stolen booty, a senior police officer said, adding that Sumeer would dress well and travel in car to avoid attention.
The police also recovered a diary maintained by Rajeshwari which has mentions of where the laptops were stolen from and where they were sold and for how much. The diary proved helpful to police during investigations.
The couple were caught when Madiwala police inspector Mallesh Bolettin following the digital footprint of one of the stolen laptops went to Chennai, where it was sold and investigation subsequently led to Sumeer.
The police recovered 151 laptops worth Rs 72 lakh, 4 Apple IPads and six tabs from them.
Man arrested for stealing brand new car
In a similar exercise, the Madiwala police arrested Pillakal Nazeer (56), a resident of Gurappanapalya and recovered a brand new car worth Rs. 35 lakh from him, which he had stolen from a showroom in Tamil Nadu recently.
According to the police, the accused Pilakkal Nazeer, approached the showroom in TN posing as prospective customers and took the brand new car (Hundai Santa Fe) for a test drive and sped away. He came to Bengaluru and used the car to move around and steal laptops and expensive gadgets from houses and PG accommodations, a senior police officer said. He would then put them on sale online, the police added.
