The police on Sunday claimed to have cracked the case of the burglary at the apartment of Nobel Peace laureate Kailash Satyarthi, with the arrest of three brothers from Sangam Vihar. On February 7, the brothers allegedly broke into the Kalkaji apartment and took away articles, including the citation of the recognition and a replica of the Nobel medal.
However, the police noted that the citation was not among the items recovered from Vinod (35), Sonu (28) and Rajan (25). The trio had also burgled two other apartments in Aravali Apartments, where Mr. Satyarthi stays.
Till Sunday evening, the police were questioning the trio on the whereabouts of the citation, which Mr. Satyarthi had earlier described as being of national importance and had requested the suspects to return it.
Describing the process of zeroing in on the accused, Joint Commisisoner of Police (South Eastern Range) R.P. Upadhyay said the CCTV footage, though available, was not of much help as the faces of two accused were covered while the face of the third person was not very clear.
“We looked up the profile of those who had recently been granted bail in connection with cases where similar modus operandi was used. And from a list of 50 suspects we zeroed in on Rajan who had been involved in a burglary case in Shivalik Apartments and had been arrested earlier. We tracked his movements and we found that he and his two brothers had travelled a fair bit and had even started living elsewhere,” said Mr. Upadhyay.
Rajan was the first one to be tracked down and questioned. He purportedly admitted to his involvement and that of his elder brothers —who also have criminal records. Vinod, Sonu and Rajan have 10, eight and six cases respectively of burglary and robbery against them, said Mr. Upadhyay.
The brothers used to live in a slum which was cleared by he DDA to construct Aravali Apartments and were therefore, aware of the topography of the area, police said. In a span of nearly two hours, they targeted three houses in the early hours of February 7.
“I had complete faith in the government, the police and the people of this great nation. I thank the Delhi Police for the brilliant and speedy recovery of the items stolen from my residence and I hope that the Nobel citation is recovered soon as well. Nothing can deter my mission to work towards my children,” said Mr. Satyarthi reacting to the development.
According to the police, the accused had not realised the value of what they had stolen but from media reports, they were sure that they had “done something big” and were wary of disposing off the stolen articles.
