MUMBAI: The thief’s entry into the sixth-floor flat was sort of filmy. Attired in a T-shirt and shorts, the man scaled the drainage pipe to enter Marathi film director Swapna Joshi’s 3BHK home at Andheri (W), and vaulted over into the hall by sliding open the French window between 3.10 am and 3.30 am Sunday.
The young man is captured on CCTV camera footage, rummaging through stuff in the hall as one of their pet cats looks on, he then heads to the kitchen, pushes open the door of a bedroom and takes a peek.The director’s elderly mother is asleep on the bed; a caretaker is on the floor. He almost enters the next bedroom where the director is sleeping, but recoils, possibly on spotting a dog in her room. He then strolls into the kitchen, casts a glance in the prayer room and struts into the third bedroom where the director’s daughter and her husband are asleep. Here, he grabs a purse, and pulls out Rs 6,000 from it, but overlooks a laptop. “Maybe it was the thought of juggling a laptop while sliding down the pipe…,” the director told TOI.
His entry into this room turned out to be his faux pas. The family’s second cat which cannot mew is alerted. It springs up on its feet and moves towards the son-in-law, Deven, who stirs out of sleep. It takes him a few seconds to figure things out and spot the intruder. “Next, he’s screamed ‘chor’, and chased the thief… was close to nabbing him,” said the director.
The footage shows the thief hurriedly slip out of the open French window and he starts his descent of six storeys from the same pipe.
The film director told TOI she still shudders at the thought of what could have happened. “I’m still to get over the shock…” she said, adding that she still looks over her shoulder, imagining that some stranger could still be lurking around the house.
She called up filmmaker Ashoke Pandit to accompanied her to Amboli police station. Pandit said: “She seems terribly shaken up.”
While the film director has lodged a police complaint, she has also asked a fabricator to install safety grilles at entry points to the flat.
