Former employee arrested for stealing laptop parts from IT company in Noida

The suspect was sacked from the IT company on February 17 this year, after he was found guilty of theft. The company suffered an estimated ₹45 lakh loss due to the theft of computer parts, said police

Police arrested a 35-year-old man on Tuesday for allegedly stealing laptop/computer parts from his office in Noida Sector 62 earlier this year, said officials.

The suspect -- identified as Navneet Katiyar -- revealed during interrogation that he had doctored 76 laptops and 32 computers, and stolen the memory modules and hard discs, said police on Tuesday.

The suspect -- identified as Navneet Katiyar -- is a resident of Vaishali in Ghaziabad, and a native of Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh.

Anand Hardi, senior director of the company, said in the complaint that Katiyar worked at the company as an IT support person from April 19, 2017, to February 17 this year. “He had full access to the company’s IT assets like laptops, desktops and IT storeroom... As most of the employees usually complained that their laptops or desktops were slow, we got those checked and found that the standard configurations -- 20 gigabyte (GB) and 16GB memory -- of the systems were reduced to 8GB and 4GB. The company’s business was affected due to the slow systems,” Hardi said.

The company conducted an internal investigation, and sacked Katiyar on February 17, 2021, after he was found guilty of theft. It suffered an estimated ₹45 lakh loss due to the theft of memory card and hard discs of the systems.

The management team of the Information Technology (IT) firm filed a case against Katiyar at the Sector 58 police station on February 18 this year, said the station house officer (SHO), Vinod Kumar. Police immediately launched a search to nab the suspect as he escaped after the incident.

After months, police received a tip about the movement of Katiyar near Noida Sector 62 roundabout on Tuesday.

“A police team arrested him from there. Katiyar revealed during interrogation that he had doctored 76 laptops and 32 computers, and stolen the memory modules and hard discs,” said SHO Kumar, adding that the suspect was produced before a court and sent to judicial custody on Tuesday.