Burglars strike at bride's house, make off with valuables worth Rs 11 lakh

Hyderabad: Burglars struck at a residence in Saket Colony of Jawahar Nagar in the early hours of Sunday, when the occupants were away to host a wedding reception for their friends and family, making off with valuables worth Rs 11 lakh.

R.S.N. Sastry, the house owner, said his family was at a hotel in Secunderabad to host his sister Lakshmi Ranjani’s reception when the incident took place. “We attended the reception and returned around 1.30 am,” he said.

“Upon arriving at the house, I saw that the main door was partially open and we were shocked to see that the entire house, including almirahs, cupboards, bags, bedsheets, boxes, fridge and drawers, were completely ransacked,” said Sastry, who works as an IT professional.

He said that six tolas of gold ornaments and five kilograms of silver articles worth Rs 3.72 lakh were missing from the almirah, besides three laptops worth Rs 3.75 lakh and Rs 10,000 cash.

The police, for their part, said that the burglars had not left a single inch of the house unsearched and posited that they could have been looking for an important document or file.

The burglars entered the house by jumping the boundary wall and gaining entrance into the house by opening the kitchen window. They managed to open the first two latches of the kitchen door by extending their hands through the window and broke the latch by banging the door from the lower side, police sources said.

They might have spent over 45 minutes, carrying the booty in one of the victim’s bags, and exited through the kitchen door, unnoticed, they said said.

“In regular house break-ins, the offenders only target almirahs and cupboards where people usually keep their valuables, but this scene of offence was totally different from the others,” a police officer who visited the scene of the crime said.

The burglars had checked trouser pockets of clothes hung on door stands and pockets of clothes hung behind the bathroom door as well, the police said.

“They also searched over 100 studying books from the studying rack. They toppled mattresses, overturned the beds and searched the bed boxes, not sparing even a kid’s pencil box, besides make-up kits, women’s hand bags and empty bags in the kitchen, including the garbage bins,” the police officer said.

The police suspect that four burglars, all aged in their 20s, took part in the crime. Further, one of them, while using a washroom, left behind a blue cigarette lighter, the police said.

“The burglars seemed to have conducted a recce of the marriage house; they were expecting a lot more as every article of the house was checked and thrown on the floor,” a second police officer said.

The clues team is now analysing the cigarette lighter and other surfaces of the residence to pull technical evidence, including fingerprints.

K. Seetharam, Jawaharnagar police inspector, said: “We visited the crime scene. Our special teams are going through the CCTV footage; clues teams have collected evidence from the scene of the offence. Based on a complaint, we registered a case of house break under sections 445 and 443 of the IPC.”

“The robbers were aware of the marriage function at the victim's house and conducted a recce before breaking into the house,” he said.

Sastry, meanwhile, said that the suspects returned to steal his Royal Enfield Classic-350 bike, as they had already taken the keys while ransacking the house.

“They had damaged the number plates of the bike and had planned to flee using the bike, but on hearing us approaching, they might have fled. I saw four persons aged around 20 observing us; as we went closer, they ran to the other side of the road. I am sure they had come to steal my bike,” Sastry said.