The burglary

In the end of May 2009 (28th) my apartment at Kondapur was burgled. When I got the news I was in Khairtabad with a friend. Driving back was perhaps one of the fastest drives considering the traffic and not the safest. When I reached my place I found that the latch holding the lock was busted and the door ajar. Of course my roommates were already there and so were the cops. My roommates made the precaution of not touching anything; I guess the idea that the cops would be searching for fingerprints was a hope we got from watching too many movies. The cops basically opened all doors, touched everything, questioned the watchman and left.

We then left for the police station at Madhapur (its supposed to be ISO 9002 or something – don’t think its good for anything) to register an FIR only to be told that we should return the next morning – then why do they call it a First Information Report? The cops were quick to point out that in Hitech city area only Laptops, cameras and other electronic gadgets get stolen – hurray we got hi-tech thieves!!! The next morning we went to the station again to register the FIR and to take a cop to our place so that they can start their investigation. There were two of them one was a OK, the other was a gorilla of a man whose sole purpose seemed to be to intimidate anyone he got into contact with. They reached our place and Gorilla immediately pounced on the Watchman for not maintaining a register of people entering the building – which should be done. The watchman in question is a total buffoon who lets anyone into the building, i think his wife does a better job at watching the people in the building. So the cops came into our place and we took them around the rooms explaining where the various things that got stole were placed. Me being me I naturally explained in English only for the Gorilla to pounce on me for not speaking in Hindi or Telugu – luckily the other guy knew English and we managed to proceed. The cops also insisted that all apartments should get internal door locks, which was also implemented by the building owner, however the damage was done .

The total number of Items stolen were: 2 Laptops, 3 digital cameras, 3 watches, 1 backpack, 1 electric razor (doesn’t the thief know about personal hygiene), 1 external hard drive, 1 Motorola cell phone charger. The cops estimated the total cost of stolen items to Rs.35000 where is the logic in that – one laptop and 1 camera were 1 month old each, those alone amounted to Rs.64000. On returning to the police station we were told to submit the complaint and return after 5 days to collect the FIR. In truth we got the FIR notice after 3 weeks after repeatedly getting new dates to complete to collect the FIR notice. The last time I went to the police station to collect the FIR the SI even asked me why I wanted a copy since it was not a company laptop nor insured – the honest answer to that is to ensure that the cops are doing their job – but I replied saying that I had some company data on the laptop; but that brings to mind “Will the cops only go after thieves who steal company laptops and insured property?”.

Fast forward 2 months after the burglary…

On July 25th, my roommate woke me up at 8am to say that we had to go to the police station – it seems that they had found the burglar and recovered some of the stuff. With lots of expectations we went to the Police station. Once there, the new SI (the old one got transferred) informed us that they caught the thief and can recover one DELL laptop which belonged to my roommate but not the COMPAQ which was stolen from me. He also said that the laptop is another DELL laptop and not the same laptop which was stolen – then why bother us in the first place? He said that it will be impossible to get the same laptop again since it has been sold of in pieces in Iran – what can you do with laptop pieces? We asked if we could see the other DELL laptop and the SI said that it has not yet been “recovered” – then how can he be so sure that they can recover it? The cop also mentioned that he traveled 3600 km to recover the laptop and catch the thief based on some network data – so if he traveled that far, how is it that there is no laptop to show for it and how could he track it if it was sold in pieces? The SI also said that we would have to sign that we received our laptop and not a replacement. My roommate refused to accept the other laptop saying that he would feel uncomfortable accepting a laptop which was not his – the cop said that nobody would miss the other laptop. His logic being “If we don’t call anybody how will they know that their laptop has been recovered?”. Either way, my roommate refused.

We then proceeded to inspect the cameras. I was more interested in the cameras than in laptops because by this time I had already purchased my new laptop. I was considering buying a new camera as well but did not get to do that, so I was hoping that my camera was among those recovered. The cop proceeded to remove cameras from a plastic bag, so much for taking care of belongings. No such luck, out of the 3 cameras which were stolen we found the Nikon S200 and the Sony T100 among lots of other cameras; both these cameras belonged to my roommates. My Canon IXUS 100 IS was not on the table.

We left the police station saying that we would think about taking the other laptop which we did not do. It makes me wonder is this the procedure followed for all thefts? Do the cops always give you something, rather than concentrating on giving you the things that you have lost; I’ve been told by friends that this would happen long before the cops called us.