How Telangana man with an Everest dream took flights to loot homes

Interrogations have revealed that Sampathi Umaprasad attended several crash courses in mountaineering

KOCHI When the 23-year-old Sampathi Umaprasad first flew to Thiruvananthapuram from Hyderabad in May this year, it was to offer prayers at the popular Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple in the city. Over the next two months though, Umaprasad flew the same route again, for reasons altogether less devout. On Wednesday, he was arrested by the Kerala Police at the Thiruvananthapuram International Airport as he flew in, accused of burgling jewelry from three homes. The loot from which, he claimed, would fund his dream to summit Mount Everest.

Sampathi Umaprasad was arrested by the Kerala Police at the Thiruvananthapuram International Airport

Senior police officials said that Umaprasad, originally from Khammam in Telangana, stayed in a hotel in Kerala’s capital for over a month in the months of May and June. “During the day, he posed as a tourist and took auto rickshaw rides through areas in a two-kilometre radius of the hotel he was staying in. As the auto passed by houses seemingly abandoned or whose gates were locked, he would mark them on Google Maps. Later at night, he would take a separate auto to a place near the homes and then check if anyone was there and if they weren’t, break in using sharp cutters to slice window sills. He used the same modus operandi in all three homes he broke into,” said K Rakesh, station house officer of the Fort police station. He ordered the cutters online and they have been recovered by the police, the officer added.

The official said that in the first burglary, held on June 17, Umaprasad decamped with jewellery worth thirty thousand. “It was in the second home in the Manacaud locality, he hit the jackpot and stole jewellery nearly worth ₹5lakh, including 10 sovereigns of gold. The third home he targeted on June 28 had loot worth ₹50,000 including a trolley bag that he used to fly home with,” Rakesh said.

A case was registered under sections 454 (trespass), 461(breaking and entering) and 380(theft) of the Indian Penal Code based on the complaint lodged by one of the victims. Three complaints of burglary have been filed against the accused at Fort and Pettah police stations.

Police officers then scanned footage from hundreds of CCTV cameras near the homes that were burgled, and in two of them, they identified the same man; Umaprasad. They traced his movements backwards and found that he used auto-rickshaws to get around, with one driver recognizing him. The receptionist at one of the hotels he had lived in recognised him, said he had vacated the room on July 1 and had spoken about taking a flight. The details he had given matched with the identity the police had already pieced together. “Since he was from Telangana, we checked the flight manifest to Hyderabad that day and found that he was on the flight. A few days later, we were informed by airline officials that he had booked a flight to Thiruvananthapuram on July 5, which is when we arrested him,” said Rakesh.

Thiruvananthapuram police commissioner CH Nagaraju said that Umprasad did not take his loot back to Hyderabad, pledging some jewellery at gold finance companies, and burying the rest beneath a flyover in the city. Investigations have also found that he was charged in multiple theft cases in Telangana, and started a life of crime before the age of 16. The accused has completed his school education, and has two elder brothers and parents who live in Telangana’s Khammam district.

Interrogations have also revealed that he had attended several crash courses in mountaineering. “He told us that he wanted to pool enough money to fund his dream to climb Mount Everest,” Rakesh said.