Cat burglars are on the prowl in Mumbai’s north-west Mumbai even while the police have beefed up surveillance in the area. On Monday, a cat burglar struck in the wee hours of the morning in the middle class locality near Rizvi College Bandra, but fortunately for the lady victim the burglar escaped when she put up resistance.  Also, around a week back, cat burglars struck at Benmar Apartments, behind Mehboob studio, Bandra and decamped with valuables worth more than Rs 5 lakh.

 

Around 2.30 on Monday while residents of Carter Apartments near Rizvi college, were in deep slumber, the cat burglar jumping over the gates of the apartments  where both the watchmen were catching up with their lost sleep, climbed up to the second on the scaffolding and entered into the apartment through the bedroom window.

 

The resident, a paying guest who is a green card holder of United States of America, on being awoken by the cat burglar rummaging through her dressing table drawers was shell-shocked and raised an alarm. The cat burglar who was taken aback tried getting physical with her. However, the victim put up a strong fight and raised an alarm. The cat burglar now sensing trouble ran back to the same bed room window and slipped away through the scaffolding leaving very little traces behind for the police to pick up, expect a few footmarks on the compound base.

 

Incidentally, the places where the cat burglars struck in the last one week in the Bandra-Khar area are located within a radius of one kilometre from the spot where a foreign national was raped in the apartment, near Perry Road Bandra, last year.

 

In the Bandra-Khar, a number of residential buildings are getting a facelift as a pre-monsoon measure to prevent rain water seepage into individual apartments and hence scaffolding has been put up.  Cat burglars take advantage of the scaffolding, are believed to strike at east and escape in the cover of darkness.

 

“Whenever buildings are being renovated there is generally a rise in cat burglars striking at ease. Security precautions need to be beefed up whenever scaffolding is put up in the compound of apartments. Majority of the security guards recruited by housing societies do duty 24/7 and are found to be in deep slumber between midnight and 4.30 am daily. Cat burglars will strike at apartments which do not have metal grills around their windows and knowing that residents too are fast asleep between 2.30 am and 4 am, they attempt breaking into the apartment. Also, a large number of societies to avoid mounting, choose over not adopting preventive measures like fixing Closed Circuit Cameras TVs at vantage points in the housing complex. If the cat burglar’s image is captured on the CCTV, we can detect the crime easily,” said Khar police station’s Police Inspector S Varpe.