Playwright loses film scripts, electronics to burglar

The Khar police is looking for a thief who entered the third-floor residence of a couple while they were asleep and got away with valuables worth Rs2.35 lakh in Bandra West. The incident happened on early Tuesday in Mount Pali apartment, next to St Anne's Church in Pali Hill. The complainant, Shabnam Sirur, 52, a former advertising professional, and her husband, Uttam, 60, were asleep when an unknown person barged into the house around 4 am.Shabnam said, "My husband and I were fast asleep. However, I heard some noise and when I woke up, I saw somebody standing near the bed, trying to get his hands on the camera that was kept on the table. It was dark, so I couldn't see his face. When I started asking who it was, the man fled." She said that she had not double-bolted the door, and the windows and doors in the house do not have grills.Before she could chase him, he had disappeared. She woke her husband up, after which the duo called the police. "When we looked around the house, we realised that two laptops, a iPod, a tablet, phones and cash, all worth Rs 2.35 lakh, were missing from the hall. Interestingly, the jewellery was intact," added Shabnam.

She added that her husband, a screenplay writer, had three of his original film scripts saved on the laptop. "We do not have backup of this data and these are scripts he had been working on for years," added Shabnam.

The thief is believed to have entered using duplicate keys as there was no sign of a break-in, said the police. The complainant, however, confirmed that she had not handed over the keys to anybody recently, although it has changed hands several times in the past among maids, neighbours and family members.The Khar police registered a case of house break-in against the unknown accused. "There are no CCTV cameras in the vicinity. We are probing the case from all angles," said a police officer.