Thiruvananthapuram: A week after he broke into a high-security home and made off with a luxury car and other possessions, Devinder Singh, alias Bunty Chor, has been captured by police.
The man who ruled the local media headlines for a week after he sped away from the burgled house in a Mitsubishi SUV was caught in Pune, taken to Mumbai by officers from Kerala and flown down to Thiruvananthapuram on Monday morning.
Large crowds waited to catch a glimpse of the burglar, who managed to enter the house despite its forbidding remote-controlled gate, bullet-proof glasses and other security devices.
After being brought back to the capital, Singh was first taken to the police camp at Nandavanam to be questioned by a team led by the circle inspector of the Peroorkada police station, R Prathapan, who is leading the investigation. Rather like the burglary that earned him his folk-hero status, Singh was brought to town from the airport with a VIP-like entourage buttressed by several police vehicles.
The burglar’s undoing was his checking into a hotel in Pune, where despite an attempt to partially hide his face with a cap, a staff member at the hotel reception recognised him and quickly checked with pictures in the media to confirm his hunch. The message was then passed on to Kerala police, which lost no time in rushing to Pune, where a team from the local Samarth police station had already taken him into custody.
Singh is suspected of breaking into the home of a non-resident Keralite, Venugopalan Nair, and stealing the car, a laptop, mobile phones and a gold ring, among other items. The car was found abandoned in Tamil Nadu but has also been returned to Thiruvananthapuram.
Reports say the burglar told police that he had also been on a mission to kill the director of the movie which had portrayed his life story but that officers are not taking the claim at face value.
