Thief holds pregnant woman hostage, sips on wine, flees with Rs 10 lakh in audacious heist in Jubilee Hills

HYDERABAD: At least two teams of the Hyderabad City Police are on a manhunt for a thief who was involved in an audacious heist in the Jubilee Hills area of Hyderabad. In a stunning modus operandi, the assailant sneaked into a businessman’s house on Road No. 52 from the backside using a ladder and held a pregnant inmate hostage at knifepoint before decamping with Rs 10 lakh.

What stunned the police and the people of the neighbourhood was his behaviour during a four-hour-long hostage drama.

According to the police, the thief intruded into the house from the backside and used a ladder for this purpose. After forcing his way inside the first-floor house, he threatened the lone pregnant woman, identified as Navya, with a knife. Holding the weapon to her neck, he made her sit for close to four hours.

While the victim remained frozen in her seat in panic, the thief nonchalantly struck a conversation with her while sipping from a bottle of wine during his robbery. In the process, he told her that he was in dire straits due to pressing financial needs and demanded Rs 20 lakh. When the hapless woman offered to part with her gold jewellery, he flatly refused and insisted on liquid cash.

The woman then sought the money from her husband and handed over Rs 10 lakh to the thief who fled from the place in a cab to Shadnagar. Interestingly, under duress, he made Navya book the taxi cab for him through her mobile phone app.

Stung by the audacious robbery, the Hyderabad police formed three teams and launched a manhunt for him. Although the police could not find concrete evidence from CCTV footage, they could establish that the thief, who covered his face with a mask, intruded into the house using the ladder and broke into Navya's first-floor house. They suspect that it could be handiwork of a person who is very familiar with the place even though there was evidence of anyone conducting a recce in the area.

The police claimed that the thief, after fleeing from Jubilee Hills, had moved around the Shadnagar bus stand area for some time and went on a shopping spree in a mall for three hours. He was found to have changed into new clothes after shopping before going untraceable.

Taking the case as a challenge, the Hyderabad City police deployed two teams, one for nabbing the accused and the other to find out the clues. The police, who are searching for the assailant in the villages around Shadnagar, are also eliciting information from Navya’s family members due to the suspected involvement of a known person.