BENGALURU: As students, professionals and inmates of PG accommodations and hostels spent their weekends partying, visiting malls and going out with friends, this Andhra Pradesh-based man made the most of it by stealing laptops, tablets and mobile phones from the open windows of their rooms. But after making away with hundreds of gadgets, he has finally landed in police net.
Cops have recovered 133 laptops, 19 mobile phones, and 14 tablets, altogether worth around Rs 75 lakh, from K Vishwanath, 35, a resident of Gorantla village in Sri Sathya Sai district, AP.He had stolen them from hostel rooms, PG accommodations and other places, mostly on weekends. Without breaking doors or windows, he would look for an open window with a table nearby and a laptop or some other gadget on it. He would use his hands to pick up the booty, police said.
Vishwanath was arrested in 2019 on charges of stealing a laptop from a student after breaking into his room near Yeshwantpur. In the past two months, eight cases of laptop theft from PG accommodations and hostel rooms were registered with Sadashivanagar police. On scanning CCTV footage, cops found that the same person was behind all the thefts. Further analysis of CCTV footage showed that the man, after stealing the laptops in the early hours of the day, would reach the KSRTC bus terminal at Majestic and board buses headed to AP.
After visiting the KSRTC bus terminal and interacting with conductors of the buses the accused had boarded, police realised that their target was in Gorantla. On arresting Vishwanath, the cops were surprised by the number of laptops he had managed to steal from different parts of Bengaluru in the past six months or so.
“He would visit PG accommodations, hostel rooms and houses in areas near popular educational institutions. He would select rooms with large windows and scale the compound at night during weekends, knowing that students, private firm employees and others would mostly be away,” a cop said.
Sadashivanagar police have also arrested two more persons for purchasing stolen laptops from the accused — Manjunath, who ran a computer sales and service centre, and SK Selvan, who ran an e-waste management company in Sahakar Nagar.
Vishwanath would sell the laptops for anything between Rs 5,000 and Rs 20,000 per piece to the duo, who would then sell them to small companies. Vishwanath knew the names of popular laptop companies and would drive a hard bargain for those with greater brand value, police added.