61-year-old with gait held for burgling TV artiste's house

HYDERABAD: A 61-year-old burglar’s peculiar gait was a dead giveaway that helped the police crack a case of theft of jewellery worth ₹45 lakhs from a TV artiste’s residence in Srinagar Colony.

City Police Commissioner C.V. Anand said they scanned footage of over 100 CCTV cameras, from roads of Srinagar Colony till Kukatpally, which helped them, along with other clues, trace the thief to Aurangabad in Maharashtra.

The police said that they identified him by his gait as a repeat offender, who has 96 cases against him, with the SR Nagar Police maintaining a dossier on him.

Siddique was detained twice under the PD Act by the city and Cyberabad Police, following which he relocated to Aurangabad.

Despite being frail, he was an expert in breaking locks and could ransack locked houses in a short time, the police said.

Following the latest burglary, he travelled in an autorickshaw to Erragadda, from where he took a bus to Bidar. He gave 15 tolas of gold to an associate and travelled to Aurangabad with the rest.

The police caught him while he was returning to the city to sell the gold.

Anand said that with Siddique’s arrest, another burglary that took place at SR Nagar in February, in which gold and silver articles were stolen, was also cracked.