Bengaluru: Youth steals gadgets from halls & delivery boy, held

BENGALURU: A 20-year-old college student has been arrested for allegedly stealing cameras from a Flipkart delivery boy and from marriage halls in the city. The accused is Prajwal, a Yeshwantpur resident. Police seized two cameras, a lens, and two sets of Apple AirPods, all worth over Rs 3.6 lakh, from him.
Cops said he purchased a camera for Rs 36,490 and two sets of AirPods for Rs 31,980 on Flipkart using cash-on-delivery mode. He placed the order using an account under the fake name of Puneeth. The items were supposed to be delivered by September 26. Delivery boy Imran Khan reached the address and tried to call the customer on the registered mobile number. But the number was not reachable and he tried to deliver the items the following day.
Prajwal contacted Khan over phone and requested delivery of the parcels on Gayathri Temple road. "I reached the place by 8.30am on September 27 and a person approached me identifying himself as Puneeth. He took the parcels and fled from the spot before I could park my vehicle," Khan stated in his complaint.
Khan informed his firm about what had happened, but they did not file a complaint. The firm's staff were alerted after the miscreant ordered another camera using the same number. A team of delivery boys tried to catch him when he arrived to collect the camera, but he managed to escape. On November 8, Khan approached Yeshwantpur police and filed a complaint.
A police team verified CCTV footage from nearby buildings and identified the accused. He was arrested and produced in court, which remanded him in judicial custody. Cops learned that Prajwal had been arrested by RT Nagar police in January in connection with a theft case. He was released on bail within a few weeks and later started to steal cameras.
Probe revealed Prajwal was a BBA student and lived with his grandfather, an ASI. He was interested in making videos, which he would host on social media, and short movies. As he needed costly cameras to shoot high-quality videos, he decided to steal them. He visited a marriage hall in Yeshwantpur and stole a camera by diverting the cameraman's attention. Later, he stole a lens from a marriage hall in Shankarapuram.