When 'Super thief' riding Chevrolet met 'Super cops'

New Delhi: A smart young man dressed in branded clothes with sunglasses on and seated in a luxury Chevrolet Cruze enters an apartment, the security guards impressed by the car, stand up and salute, little did they knew that they just gave way to a 'Superthief' who uses his lavish lifestyle, his confidence and luxury car to dodge the security and enter an apartment for burglary in posh south Delhi apartments of Vasant Kunj.

Siddharth Mehrotra, the superthief as the cops describe him has developed an expertise in dodging skills. The 27-year-old has struck 18 times in posh Vasant kunj colonies and targeted politicians, buraucrats, officers and businessmen since the probability of a "fruitful theft" was maximum.

After getting arrested, he told the cops that he was confident that he wouldn't be caught as most people never suspected him seeing his lifestyle.

"He is an animation graduate. All his neighbours in Pitampura knew that he is doing a high profile job in Animation and hence could afford a wealthy lifestyle. We arrested him from Pitampura itself on August 15," said Additional DCP Chinmoy Biswal.

When the cops scanned the CCTV footage, they saw a confident young man, walking in style and carefully scanning the apartments at the ground floor. The modus operandi was to ring the bell at the ground floor and if none came out after two-three rings, he knew it was vacant and could be targeted. Siddharth never took risk of stealing on the first or second floor as the possibility of being caught was higher. He also had a spotter who alerted him if someone approaches in the middle of the theft. The favourite place to get inside the apartment was kitchen window.

Superthief Siddharth was lucky when he burgled a house in Noida and got Rs 34 lakh, the money he spent to buy a brand new Chevrolet Cruze and a superbike. Nobody suspected the money source as he belonged to a rich and educated family. Later, he used the luxury car to do burglaries in Vasant Kunj area.

Interestingly, the cops with only the CCTV footages as evidence had to scan close to 1,000 keywords on Google to get some clue about the man.

Looking at the confidence he exhibited, cops soon realised that he is a professional thief and banked upon Google to see if he had made news headlines or been arrested. Cops were lucky to find an article in an English daily where he was caught by Noida police in 2015.

This provided the police his name and a team of officers scanned his facebook profile where he was seen seated on top of a Eco sports car in a tour in Leh.

"It was not difficult for us and we checked the Eco Sports number. The car was registered in the name of Vikas Kumar. After we reached him, Siddharth Mehrotra was nabbed from Pitampura," said DCP South Ishwar singh.

Siddharth's father is a retired bank official and has abandoned his son after knowing his dubious record.

Police have seized the Chevrolet Cruze, laptops, gold bangles, earrings, gold chains and gold rings from his possession.

His two associates, identified as Jitender and Anurag, have also been arrested.