Mumbai, Apr 12 (Mid-day) : You can’t say he doesn’t have fancy taste. A mobile thief was caught on camera stealing over 190 phones worth Rs 36 lakh from a showroom. The surprising tidbit: he only selected mobiles that were priced over Rs 10,000.

The incident took place in the wee hours of Wednesday at Sony Collection, a popular showroom in Kalina, Santacruz (East), owned by 65-year-old Nanalal Soni. According to Soni, he received a call on Wednesday from his worker Prabhu Singh alias Chhotu saying that the shutters to the store were open.

Soni said, “I thought one of my workers might be sleeping inside. But when I reached the shop and opened the shutters, we found that many of the mobile phones on display had been stolen.”
He then immediately informed the Vakola police station, who are now looking at the CCTV footage of the showroom.

According to the police, the accused reached the showroom around 2 am with a three-wheeler and then waited for three hours before he broke open the shutters and started stealing the phones.

Senior Inspector Vinayak Mule of the Vakola police station said, “Interestingly, the accused patiently took a look at each and every phone and checked their prices. Any phone priced below R10,000 he left behind and only picked the high-end phones. As per the footage, he was very systematic. He would fill one bag, then put it in the tempo and continue to do so till he filled all six of his bags.”

Accused booked

Mule added that the accused wasn’t even bothered by the two cameras inside the store and went about his business, sometimes even looking straight into them. “We have registered a case under sections 457 (night breaking) and 380 (theft) under the IPC. We have a few clues and hope to arrest the accused soon,” said Mule, adding that the accused stole 190 phones within 21 minutes.