Bhubaneswar: The lone burglar, who stole around Rs 50 lakh worth gold ornaments from senior Congress leader Niranjan Patnaik’s IRC village residence in the early hours of January 26, reportedly has two wives and several girlfriends.
Involved in over 70 burglary incidents in different states including Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, 38-year-old Karri Satti Babu alias Satheesh Reddy alias Spider Satish also showered them with expensive gifts, including diamonds, gold jewellery and iPhone. He also spent lakhs of rupees on spa for his dogs. He had also bought a ball worth Rs 1 lakh online from Indonesia for his pets, according to sources.
Satti Babu was also the prime suspect in a theft at the house of Subash Agarwal, chairman and founder of ARSS Infrastructure Projects Ltd, in the same VIP area in 2023. He had also decamped with 7 kg sovereigns of gold from luxury villa of a legislator in Kerala in June last year and spent three months in jail in connection with the theft.
Police sources further stated the accused targeted posh areas and conduct recce by scaling boundary walls to avoid CCTV cameras on the roads, after collecting information from Google and YouTube. He would spent hours in gym to hone his skills that would help him climb houses and scale boundary walls without any support, which earned him the nickname ‘Spider’. He even prepared a special diet chart to stay lean and agile.
Satti Babu allegedly entered the house of the ex-OPCC chief here through a sliding glass window and used the same for escape. He used gloves, shoes and mask to avoid leaving prints. The accused had put his mobile phone on airplane mode and used social media for any interaction to avoid detection.
The hunt for him lasted 18 days as police scanned 400 CCTV cameras in Bhubaneswar, Sompeta, Srikakulam and Vizianagaram and verified more than 10,000 mobile phone numbers with multiple teams dispatched to different places in Odisha, Andhra Pradhesh, Karnataka and Kerala.
His shoes with radium sticker gave a lead to police as they zeroed in on a autorickshaw, which he used to flee the crime spot. He then hired a car – used by a diamond merchant – at Baramunda bus stop to travel to Andhra Pradesh.
Police teams travelled more than 5,000 km after the Kerala clue to nab the accused, who originally hailed from Bapuji Nagar Colony at Kotha Gajuwaka in Visakhapatnam but resided at Bheemilipatnam area. Assistance of AP and Kerala police was taken to obtain records from jails, the sources added.
