Return of the super-thief?

On the evening of June 2, a man walked into a house in south Delhi’s posh Vasant Kunj neighbourhood. With the owners away, he asked the domestic help for the keys to the family car, a Volkswagen Polo, claiming it was blocking his way and he needed to move it. The keys were handed over and the stranger coolly drove away with the car.

A week later, the same car drove up to a petrol pump in nearby Vasant Vihar, got its tank filled and sped away without paying a paisa. The scene was re-enacted a few days later.

While these might, at first glance, seem like minor misdemeanours in a city that is habitually reeling from the shock of violent crimes, their modus operandi has left the Capital’s police force jittery.

Someone like Bunty

For close to two decades, a super-thief had Delhi equally horrified and fascinated with similar capers. A resident of Vikaspuri in west Delhi, Devinder Singh, better known as Bunty, pulled off his crimes with an insouciance that left the police embarrassed and fuming.

The audacious car theft this month made them sit up — it had all the markings of Bunty, except the man himself was supposed to be behind bars in Kerala. On checking and confirming that the super-thief was still behind bars, the Delhi police now had a new worry — was a copycat super-thief on the prowl?

“With Bunty in a Kerala jail, we are afraid there might be ‘Bunty imitators’ on the loose,” says a senior police official. “Investigations are on, and we are trying to get to the bottom of these last two incidents. Even though this is not strictly Bunty’s style, the thieves do seem to be inspired by him.”

News reports have breathlessly claimed that he has committed anywhere from 400 to 700 burglaries, mostly in the National Capital Region and surrounding States, but also in other places such as Bhopal, Pune, Chennai and Thiruvananthapuram. “The property he stole from Delhi alone is valued at more than ₹7 crore,” says Inspector Rajender Singh, Special Task Force, Delhi Police. Singh is a ‘Bunty expert’ of sorts, having tracked him down and taken him into custody twice in the last 12 years. “I don’t think there are many other criminals who achieved this kind of notoriety singlehandedly. Bunty is definitely one of a kind.”

Matinee idol

Bunty’s antics even inspired a successful Bollywood film, Dibakar Banerjee’s Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! The lead character, Lucky, played by Abhay Deol, is based on the life and crimes of the superchor. Released in 2008, the film shows Deol stealing a car, and for good measure a TV as well, using a similar technique.

Banerjee sees the film as a “fable about modern India”. “On the surface it is an often funny and thrilling ride. But at its core, it is about what the new and ‘liberated’ India is,” he had said, after the release of the film, which went on to become a cult classic. The film and further acts of infamy gained Bunty not only a slot in the “most wanted” lists across States but also in Mumbai’s TV studios.

Roped in for the fourth season of the reality TV show Bigg Boss, Bunty found himself in rather exceptional company — Abbas Kazmi, one of the lawyers who represented 26/11 terrorist Ajmal Kasab, former professional wrestler Khali, former bandit and Samajwadi Party member Seema Parihar and Bhojpuri superstar Manoj Tiwari. He didn’t last long though; the organisers sent him out on the second day of filming because he was “constantly hurling abuses, trying to cover cameras with socks and (had) complete disrespect for the house rules”. The super-thief was also approached to host crime shows on Hindi channels, but nothing came of it.

Last year, a Malayalam film called Bunty Chor was released, but unlike its Hindi counterpart it was not a hit.

A strange kind of thief

“In one of his heists, Bunty stole a photo of the homeowner’s wife and daughter, along with the furniture,” recalls Singh. “We were worried he may be planning to kidnap them… When we arrested him though, we found that he had placed the photo frame in his living room along with the stolen furniture, and was pretending to be an NRI-businessman based in Singapore. He was really unusual in that sense.”

After his arrest in 2007 and eventual release in 2010, the police assisted Bunty in setting up a detective agency in Delhi when he asked for their help to “lead a positive life”. Krishna Detective and Security Experts didn’t stay in business for long though, not after Bunty was arrested again in 2013. He had stolen an SUV from a businessman’s house in Thiruvananthapuram and the police tracked him down in Pune.

When we contacted K Padmakumar, ADGP, Kerala Police, he confirmed that Bunty was still in their custody. Now all that the Delhi police can hope for is that the latest superchor inspired crimes were nothing more than a flash in the pan. “The theft in Vasant Kunj is just a one-off incident. If we see more such cases, then we will have to consider them as copycat crimes, based on Bunty’s style,” says a senior officer. “For Bunty though, it was never about the stolen property he amassed, it was always about how he got away with it. He was definitely a stylish kind of thief.”