HYDERABAD: Microbiology graduate Madduri Venkata Vivekanand, is a thief, who is quite literally a class apart. Arrested by the Railway Police at Secunderabad on Wednesday, Vivekanand would travel only in AC coaches and steal valuables of co-passengers.
He mostly struck on trains coming from Andhra Pradesh to Hyderabad. An employee of a tech firm in the city, the ‘AC class burglar’ spent his ill-gotten money on himself, not his family. Police recovered 52 grams of gold jewellery, one laptop and cash, all worth `3.50 lakh from him and charged him with 16 bag lifting offences in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
Vivekanand was earlier arrested for his involvement in 19 cases in Guntur and Vijayawada. He was sent to remand. Though out on bail in early 2020, he took a break when trains were cancelled due to the Covid pandemic. Recently, he struck again on two city-bound trains and looted passengers.
The burglar, who hails from Machilipatnam in Andhra Pradesh, dropped out while doing his Masters and joined a tech firm at Gachibowli. His wife and parents stay at Machilipatnam. On board the train, he wouldn’t interact with passengers and pretend to be asleep. Once everyone slept, he would steal bags of passengers and get down at his destination. Police say Vivekanand preferred AC travel even on buses.