Mastermind - A tale of Robberies

Hello and warm welcome, it’s been a long time since I put up some juicy stuff so you can dig your piggy eyes into it. What to do was busy in my mediocre working class life. After some brainstorming I thought why not make my blog a little adventurous. I know most of my blogs are very sad and melodramatic :P So let’s put some tadka of titillating suspense in this blog. I have handpicked some awesome heist just for you, warning some of these stories might be familiar as we have zillion movies made on them in Hollywood,  Bollywood, Tollywood etc. etc. So let start the adventures of some really exciting burglaries that will blow your mind.  

                                                      Some onions can really make you cry hard

At least for Mr. Anant Naik from Prateeksha Nagar in Wadala who was robbed of 700 kg of kitchen staple worth about Rs 50,000. "Naik had covered his stock of onions at around 9.30pm on Friday and left for home. When he returned on Saturday morning, 700 kg of onions kept in 14 sacks were missing," he told the police. The stolen onion stock was estimated to be worth Rs 50,000 as the wholesale onion prices had touched Rs 57 per kg at Lasalgaon in Maharashtra, Asia's biggest onion market. Also in Delhi market and some other parts of the country, retail onion prices had gone up to Rs 80 per kg depending. Taking full advantage of the onion black market situation in the country the burglars made some quick bucks on the easy steal.

                                                                                    in a brazen tale of robbery

A set of robbers targeted 16 houses in one night in Ashok Nagar chawl in Kanjur Marg, and made away with cash and valuables worth Rs 6 lakh on hot summers Sunday. However, though the gang visited 16 houses, they failed to break open three and found nothing at another three. So they managed to get their haul adding up to Rs 6 lakh on the basis of whatever they looted from 10 of those houses that is some whooping amount of hard cash stashed in someone’s home. These robbers targeted the houses of people who were on summer vacations, now that’s really nasty to ruin someone’s happy holiday memories.

                                                                                                    Online cheaters 

Anita Shirish Kulkarni from Dombivli, aged 49 years and Mobin Yusuf Mahafule, aged 24 years from Naupada in Mumbai rented a flat at Kharghar’s Eden Garden Sector-5. Using fake documents, they renamed themselves as Anita and Siddharth Chabra, and acted like mother-son. The process of cheating started with them ordering iPhones with cash on delivery option. As soon as the delivery boy arrived at their residence, one of them engaged the delivery personal in some talks, and the other went inside the home, exchanged the actual delivery with a similar box containing a fake handset. Once exchanged, they would inform the ignorant delivery boy that the phone is defective. Using this strategy, they were able to rob 17 iPhones, worth Rs 8.16 lakh. Now this is some really serious online shoplifting.

                                                                                                        Breaking News 

In the early hours of March 18, 1990, an art theft occurred at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts while the rest of the city celebrated St Patrick's Day. A pair of men disguised as Boston police officers tricked the museum security guards into granting them access to the building. They proceeded to tie up the guards and loot the museum for over an hour before escaping in their vehicle. Thirteen works of art were stolen worth an estimated $500 million, making it the largest private property theft in history. Since the collection and its layout are permanent, empty frames remain hanging as homage to the missing works and also placeholders for when they will be returned. The choice of paintings stolen will puzzles experts, especially since more valuable artwork was untouched. Among the stolen works was The Concert, one of only 34 known works by Vermeer and thought to be the most valuable unrecovered painting at over $200 million. Also missing is The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, Rembrandt's only known seascape. Other works by Rembrandt, Degas, Manet, and Flinck were also stolen, I must say quite artistic steal by the thieves.

                                                                                                 Stealing the Star

The Millennium Dome raid was an attempted robbery of the Millennium Dome's diamond exhibition in Greenwich, South East London occurring on 7 November 2000. A local gang planned to ram-raid the De Beers diamond exhibition which was being held in the dome at the time. The gang had then planned to escape via the Thames in a speedboat. The De Beers diamond exhibition had a number of jewels on display including the Millennium Star, a flawless 203.04 carats (40.608 g) gem with an estimated worth of £200 million and considered one of the most perfect gems in the world. Also on display were priceless blue diamonds. The attempted robbery was foiled by the Flying Squad of the Metropolitan Police Service, who already had the gang members under surveillance for their suspected roles in a number of unsuccessful armoured vehicle robberies. The operation to foil the robbery was the biggest operation undertaken in the Flying Squad's history and at trial the judge in the case commended the way it was carried out.  If the heist had succeeded, then with a haul of £350 million worth of diamonds, it would have become the biggest robbery in history at the time.

                                                                                The Chelambra bank robbery 

In the Malappuram district of Kerala, India is considered to be one of the biggest and most sensational bank robberies in the crime history of Kerala. In the early hours of 30 December 2007, the robbers made a hole in the floor of the Bank of Kerala and got away with 80 kilograms of gold and 5,000,000 rupees, a total value of 80 million Indian Rupees. The bank was in the second floor of a building. The ground floor had a restaurant that was up for rent. The four-member gang rented the restaurant by giving an advance payment of about Rs. 50,000. They shut down the front door and placed a board saying that it was under renovation and would reopen on 8 January 2008. To make things more convincing, they even bought new furniture for the restaurant and much construction material for the site. Those who were watching the scene would have thought that repairs were going on. But they were cracking the first floor open, where the lockers were kept. They cracked it and made a big enough hole in the ceiling to the locker room. All the money they took was from some iron safes which they cut open using a gas cutting machine. They took away gold and cash kept inside the safe. The police team also monitored all telephone calls in the closest mobile signal towers at the location of the crime during the midnight hours of the incident. It was a big task monitoring more than two million calls. The help of various mobile service providers and IT professionals was also enlisted for the probe. Finally, it was the identification of a secret phone number used by the main suspects to communicate between themselves that became the turning point in the investigation. The police team finally zeroed in on a house in Kozhikode where the accused were hiding and arrested four people including Joseph alias Jaison alias Babu, the kingpin of the operation along with three others including a woman and recovered 80% of the stolen gold and money. It is the first recovery in the crime history of Kerala of so much stolen property.

                                                                          Airplane Pirate Mr. D. B. Cooper 

One afternoon a day before Thanksgiving in 1971, a guy calling himself Dan Cooper (the media mistakenly called him D.B. Cooper) boarded Northwest Airlines flight #305 in Portland bound for Seattle. He was wearing a dark suit and a black tie and was described as a business-executive type. While in the air, he opened his brief case showing a bomb to the flight attendant and hijacked the plane. The plane landed in Seattle where he demanded 200K in cash, four parachutes and food for the crew before releasing all the passengers. With only three pilots and one flight attendant left on board, they took off from Seattle with the marked bills heading south while it was dark and lightly raining. In the 45 minutes after takeoff, Cooper sent the flight attendant to the cockpit while donning the parachute, tied the bank bag full of twenty dollar bills to him, lowered the rear stairs and somewhere north of Portland jumped into the night sky. When the plane landed with the stairs down, they found the two remaining parachutes and on the seat Cooper was sitting in, just a black tie. This is called classic drama just the way aha aha, I like it aha aha...

                                                                                                Opera House heist 

In a very dramatic turn of events on 19 March 1987, when 28 so-called probationary CBI officers entered the jewellery shop around 2.15 pm to the fake income tax raid on the Opera House branch of Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri (TBZ) in Mumbai. The mastermind alias Mon Singh strode straight to owner Pratapbhai Zaveri, introduced himself as Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) officer Mon Singh, and produced a search warrant. CCTV footage was cut off, the jeweller has to surrender his licensed revolver, no telephone calls and one probationer was asked to put up a board at the entrance stating that a raid was on. The jeweller was told that the CBI was investigating the quality of gold sold in such shops, the recruits picked up assorted jewellery before sealing it in packets. Money was also collected from the cash counter and stashed into briefcases. In 45 minutes Singh asked the recruits to keep the booty worth Rs. 35 lakh in the waiting bus. The rest of the officers were asked to guard the shop as Singh left to 'supervise' another raid. As Mon Singh had booked a room at the The Taj Mahal Palace & Tower on March 17. Meanwhile, Singh got off the bus at The Taj, asked the bell boy to call a taxi, and put the bags inside the vehicle. The taxi headed towards Vile Parle where he was last seen. After waiting for an hour, the 28 men realised something was amiss. The jeweller immediately called the D B Marg police. A background check revealed that Singh had inserted a classified advertisement in a leading daily on March 17. He was seeking replies for the post of 'Security and Intelligence officers. 'Candidates who answered were asked to report to room 415 at The Taj, where he was believed to have been staying. He hired an office at Mittal Towers in Nariman Point when The Taj refused to grant permission to interview candidates. Singh selected 28 candidates and asked them to report near Gateway of India around noon the following day. A bus was hired which headed towards Chowpatty. All candidates were handed identity cards with fake government Ashoka insignia. Minutes before entering the jewellery shop, they were briefed about the 'mock raid'. Almost 23 years after the daring daylight robbery, the Mumbai police are still clueless about the mysterious conman who knew too well how the intelligence agency functioned.

                                                                                                 Kakori conspiracy

During our youth, all of us have been fascinated by reading this story buried deep within our History chapters. Let us revisit it once again as it is one of the epic burglaries in the golden Revolutionary History of India. On August 9, 1925 when the No.8 Down Train from Shahjahanpur to Lucknow was approaching Kakori, someone pulled the chain and the train stopped abruptly. Ashfaqulla got off the second class compartment with his friends Sachindra Bakshi and Rajendra Lahiri. The guard got down to find out in which compartment the chain had been pulled and why. Two revolutionaries fell on him and made him lie down on his face. Two others pushed the driver from the engine to the ground and stood guard over him. One revolutionary stood at each end of the train and both fired shots with their pistols. In the meantime they shouted, "Travellers, do not be afraid. We are revolutionaries fighting for freedom. Your lives, money and honour are safe. But take care not to peep out of the train". Four young men entered the guard’s van. They managed to push the box to the ground. It had a strong lock. There was an opening on the top; through this opening they could drop moneybags having British currency worth 8000 rupees. With a lot of struggle the broke open lock of the box and Suddenly they heard the sound of a train coming from Lucknow. Ramaprasad was frightened for a moment. He trembled at the thought of the moving train colliding with the train they had stopped. All eyes were on Ramaprasad. He ordered, "Stop firing. Turn down the pistols. Do not strike the box. Ashfaq, wait a little". The few minutes were like an age. The fast moving train passed by on the other track. The slit in the box was widened and the moneybags were taken out. During this time all passengers remained quiet including the British officers thinking that a big gang of dacoits had attacked the train. They were busy taking out the moneybags bundling them in rugs. Some of them walked towards Lucknow with the bundles on their head. These revolutionaries were Ramaprasad Bismil, Rajendra Lahiri, Thakur Roshan Singh, Sachindra Bakshi, Chandra Sekhar Azad, Keshab Chakravarty, Banwari Lal, Mukundi Lal, Manmath Nath Gupta and Ashfaqulla Khan who were the part of Hindustan Republican Association against the British rule in India.  

Thank you for taking time out and reading this one, hope you enjoyed it as much i enjoyed writing it... Special thanks to Wiki and Google for all the helpful insights what would I do without you both love you guys bear hugs in abundance... Please feel free to give your precious comments which I enjoy reading dearly :)