Debt-Ridden Bengaluru Employee Steals 50 Laptops From Office, Arrested

The suspect, Murugesh M, a BCA graduate from Hosur in Tamil Nadu, was allegedly in charge of the private company's inventory and had access to laptops

A 29-year-old system administrator at a multimedia company in Bengaluru was taken into custody by city police on suspicion of stealing 50 company laptops valued at close to Rs 22 lakh, according to officials, according to a report from the news agency PTI.

Police claimed in the report that he lost Rs 25 lakh in his failed tomato farming and cyber centre ventures, which prompted him to reportedly take the laptops from his employer, a company in Whitefield, to pay off his debt. On August 30, Telecaller India Pvt Ltd filed a case against Murugesh in the ITPL.

The suspect, Murugesh M, a BCA graduate from Hosur in Tamil Nadu, was allegedly in charge of the private company's inventory and had access to laptops. According to police sources in the report, Murugesh has admitted to stealing computers over time and disclosed that he sold them to a Hosur device repair business.

When the employee abruptly stopped showing up for work on August 22, and the company noticed that the laptops were gone, they viewed the CCTV footage of the location where the computers were kept and discovered his purported involvement. The laptops were stolen over a two month period, according to the report.

Following a complaint from the firm, the police filed a case, started an investigation, and eventually took him into custody at a Hosur movie theatre. He was then taken back to Bengaluru for more interrogation. At the time of his arrest, police reported that they had retrieved five laptops from him; furthermore, he had admitted to selling forty-five laptops that he had stolen.

"The estimated value of stolen laptops is said to be Rs 22 lakh, and they have been recovered," a Police official said.

On September 9, Murugesh was sent to jail after spending eight days in police custody.