Mumbai: The thief’s break-in into the sixth-floor apartment was quite cinematic. Dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, the man climbed up the drainpipe to break in in Marathi. Film director Swapna Joshi’s three-bedroom house in Andheri (W) and jumped into the hallway by sliding open the French door between 3:10 and 3:30 am on Sunday.
The young man is seen in CCTV footage rummaging through things in the hallway while one of their pet cats looks on. He then goes into the kitchen, pushes open the door of a bedroom and takes a look inside. The director’s old mother is sleeping in bed, a caretaker is lying on the floor. He almost goes into the next bedroom where the director is sleeping, but stops short, possibly spotting a dog in her room. He then strolls into the kitchen, takes a look into the prayer room and struts into the third bedroom where the director’s daughter and her husband are sleeping. Here he grabs a handbag and pulls out Rs 6,000, but misses a laptop. “Perhaps the idea was to juggle a laptop while sliding down the pipe…” the director told TOI.
His entry into the room turned out to be a faux pas. The family’s second cat, who cannot meow, gets alarmed. He jumps up and goes towards the son-in-law Deven, who wakes up from his sleep. It takes him a few seconds to comprehend the situation and spot the intruder. “The next thing he knew, he was shouting ‘chor’ and chasing the thief… was about to catch him,” the principal said.
The footage shows the thief hastily slipping through the open French door and beginning his six-story descent from the same pipe.
The film director told TOI that she still shudders at the thought of what could have happened. “I am still getting over the shock…” she said, adding that she still looks over her shoulder and imagines that a stranger could still be lurking in the house.
She called filmmaker Ashoke Pandit to accompany her to the Amboli police station. Pandit said, “She seems terribly shaken.”
The film director filed a complaint with the police and also asked a manufacturer to install security gates at the entrances to the apartment.