Pune: A robbery bid was made at the house of the late eminent Marathi litterateur Purushottam Laxman Deshpande, popularly known as ‘Pu La’, the Deccan Gymkhana police said on Tuesday.
The incident took place in the wee hours of Monday at the three-room flat ‘Malati Madhav’ in the city’s Bhandarkar Road . An alert neighbour reportedly saw the burglars breaking in. Deshpande’s kin were later intimated of the attempted break-in.
“While we are taking stock of things, nothing of value seems to have been stolen…Pu La’s tape recorder is untouched… the thieves broke the lock and opened some cupboards while flinging books and papers on the floor. However, they left the other cupboards unopened as they may have sensed that there was nothing of value for them,” said his nephew, Dinesh Thakur.
A similar bid at Pu La’s home was made in 2012. At the time, too, the thieves broke open the lock and some cupboards, but fled after being daunted by rooms full of books and literary papers.
The versatile and much-feted Deshpande, one of the tallest figures in Marathi literature in the latter half of the 20th century, penned some of the most enduring plays like the classic Batatyachi Chaal and Asa Mi, Asa Mi .
Besides being a superlative humorist, he was an accomplished musician, actor, and script writer whose master works include the film Gulacha Ganpati (1953), and humorous and insightful essays and short stories like Mhais , besides several noted translations into Marathi of classics from Western literature.
A complaint against unidentified persons has been filed with the Deccan Gymkhana police station.
