Thief breaks into Marathi director’s Mumbai flat, runs away after pet cat raises alarm

Mumbai: A thief broke into the flat of Marathi film director Swapna Joshi in Mumbai and fled quickly with Rs 6,000 in cash after the family’s pet cat made an alarming sound, an official said on Tuesday.

On Monday, police registered an FIR against an unidentified man who entered the flat of Joshi in Andheri (West) on Sunday.

According to the Amboli police station official, the burglar sneaked into the Marathi director’s flat at ‘Vizhar B’ building from a pipe. He fled after the family’s pet cat made an alarming sound on spotting the stranger.

Later, when Joshi checked CCTV cameras installed in her flat, she found a man in a T-shirt and a pair of shorts entering the house from a window after climbing a drainage pipe between 3.10 am and 3.30 am.

The thief entered the room of the director’s elderly mother, who was asleep. He then entered the bedroom where the director’s daughter and her husband were asleep. Here, he grabbed a purse and pulled out Rs 6,000 from it, but did not touch a laptop kept in the room, said the police.

Later, the director’s son-in-law Deven spotted the thief and ran to catch him but he managed to escape without stealing anything else, they said.

The filmmaker approached the police and lodged a complaint based on which an FIR was filed against an unidentified person under relevant sections the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the official said Further investigation was underway, he added.