Colombian duo leapt across rooftops to burgle 31 houses in Bengaluru

BENGALURU: They scaled walls and hopped across rooftops to commit burglaries, while their female aide identified the houses. Interrogation of three Colombian nationals — with the help of a Kannada-Spanish translator — over four months has enabled cops to crack 31 cases of burglary and recover stolen booty worth Rs 2.6 crore.
Parkour traceurs Willian Padilla Martinez, 48, and Christian Yeinis Navarro Olarte, 34, and their woman associate Liedy Stefania Munoz Monsalye, 23, were arrested in March. Parkour is a obstacle race-like discipline used to move from one point to another without assistance and its practitioners are called traceurs.

“However, they didn’t know English and were comfortable only in Spanish. So we had to hire a translator from JC Nagar. We also relied on Google Translate,” explained an officer.
Police said the accused came to India in September 2019 through Nepal on tourist visa. They were close associates of Gustavo Adolfo alias Jaramillo Giraldo, who was arrested by Jayanagar police in June 2018 along with four others in connection with burglaries in south Bengaluru. Booty worth Rs 80 lakh was recovered from them.
Gustavo and his aides had burgled the HSR Layout residence of former Karnataka chief secretary Kaushik Mukherjee in 2016. This case was solved when Gustavo was arrested in 2018.
All the accused, including Yair Alberto alias Roger Smith alias Smith Duarte, 45, Jose Edwardo alias Arevalo Burbano, 40, Eduard Alexis alias Garcia Peramo, 38, and Kinberly Jhoarya, 30, were later released. However, they jumped bail.
Cops investigating a burglary near actor Shivarajkumar’s residence in north Bengaluru chanced upon CCTV footage, which showed it was the handiwork of Gustavo and some of his new aides. “We found Gustavo and his gang members had escaped by jumping over a 15-ft high wall. It’s impossible to do, expect for those trained in parkour like Martinez and Olarte,” said Bhimashankar S Guled, deputy commissioner of police (northeast).
“Based on the footage, we identified the gang and arrested the three Colombians,” said another officer. Gustavo and two other Ugandans are at large.
The arrested trio, however, claimed they were innocent. The trio used to stay in service apartments or hotels for only a few weeks. They would visit posh areas on cycles to identify houses to burgle. Monsalye would find out if the houses were locked and alert her gang if no one was inside.
The gang used walkie talkies and was equipped with mobile jammers, pepper spray, knives, drilling machine, laser cutters, hardware tools, hack saw blades, ring spanners, rods, cutting pliers, flame guns and head torches.
The recovered booty includes 6.1kg of gold, a 9mm Browning pistol and 23 live rounds worth Rs 4 lakh, two bikes, three original passports, one fake passport and a fake international driving licence. Police confirmed the pistol and live rounds were stolen from a real estate businessman’s house near Hoskote. “The gang planned to flee through Nepal, for which they managed to get the fake passport and licence,” an officer said.
The accused had converted the stolen gold ornaments into ingots. “Gustavo had learnt this technique through online videos and trained his associates,” the officer added.
“We have solved 31 burglary cases reported in Kothanur, Sampigehalli, Amruthahalli, Chikkajala, Vidyaranyapura, Kodigehalli, Bagaluru, Yelahanka, Yelahanka New Town, Rajanukunte, Anekal and Avalahalli police station limits,” police said.