Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! “is” A True Story Part 2
This post forms the concluding part on the material we’ve gathered that Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! is based on a true story. For those who came in late, read Part 1 here
In one of our collected documents we found this interesting piece, which actually details how Devinder Singh aka Bunty aka Superchor worked on his targets
Today
2 Monday, 29 April 2002; Atir Khan
NEW DELHI: One morning in March, well-known chartered accountant Anil Mehra’s daughter woke up in her first-floor bedroom and looked straight into the eyes of a stranger. The unflappable stranger, wearing a smart tracksuit, spoke to her in smooth English. “Good morning, ma’am.” Then, as the lady feigned sleep, he calmly picked up her jewellery, placed casually on a table-top after coming home from a party, cleaned up valuable antiques in the living room, got into one of the family’s Opel cars and drove away from their GK-I house.Since January, this man with a taste for a life in the fast lane has robbed more than a hundred houses in Vasant Vihar, Greater Kailash, New Friends Colony and Hauz Khas, and some big-ticket bungalows in west Delhi.This man is Devender Singh a.k.a. Bunty.
He is 30, five feet nine inches tall, speaks English fluently,loves to party, and can turn nifty U-turns while blazing along at 100 km an hour.
He was caught on Sunday, and loot worth an estimated Rs 3 crore (see box: Bunty’s Booty) tracked to his two flats in Mayur Vihar’s Manu and Upkaar Apartments. The tale of Bunty the bootyhunter is already an urban legend. Even Mehra is in complete awe.When Mehra visited Bunty in a Madangir lockup on Sunday —Bunty is away with city’s police as they track down more loot in Punjab — and asked about his daughter’s gold necklace, Mehra got a calm, “I have given your daughter’s necklace to my girlfriend.I will get it from her.”Just who is Bunty and how did this burglar extraordinaire, who sometimes asks his stunned victims for water, chats with them as he robs them and looks and acts like a member of the family, take off with a career? Investigators are still piecing the details together, but what TODAY has discovered makes amazing reading.
TODAY met his tight-lipped family in Vikaspuri.
His two brothers, one an electronic engineer and the other an executive with a multinational firm say they “nothing to do with him anymore.” His mother will say, tears in her eyes, that Bunty, the youngest and a dropout after Class 10, started with petty thefts in Vikaspuri. “He kept bad company.” Then he left home, almost a decade ago.After that, as investigators say,Bunty has steadily grown as a compulsive thief with a taste for a fast life with numerous girlfriends, flashy cars and flashy clothes. He would sell what he robbed for spending money but he was clearly collecting goodies at a faster rate than he could throw money around. But he would never indulge in violence. His approach and chutzpah — and the knife that he would discreetly flash if a victim came close to screaming ensured silence. The bizarre thing is that Bunty has been caught more than once and never has he hesitated to own up for his crimes in court.He escaped from a jail in Chennai a few years ago using an ingenious technique, police officials told TODAY. He caught lizards inside his prison cell, chopped them to pieces, ate them, and fell violently ill. After being shifted to the infirmary, he just stayed long enough to recover and then escaped. He has repeated this trick. The last time he left jail was in January, after serving a sentence in Chandigarh. And almost immediately after reaching Delhi, he started robbing.Bunty is back in ustody. And the police have instructions from top brass Sharma to keep an eagle eye on this Houdini. “Don’t even blink while you guard this man,”he has warned his officers and men. Because all Bunty needs is for someone to blink — and a lizard — and he’s free to visit you.
The gentleman robber
BUNTY’S CAR BEFORE THE HOUSE PHILOSOPHY
Swanky cars are his first priority. As step one, he steals a flashy vehicle He uses the car and the memorised address to gain entry into the colony A ‘connoisseur’ that he is,he abandons the used car after his new ‘catch’ He drives off calmly in the just-acquired car alongwith the booty.
“Bunty is an amazing thief. He robs with confidence, is a man of extraordinary intelligence who uses more of his mind than his body and manages to fox people.” — Police commissioner Ajai Raj Sharma
> Rs 2.5 lakh cash
> Jewellery worth Rs 35 lakh
> 7 cars (Astra, Lancer, etc)
> 15 TV sets
> 60 watches (Rolex, Rado, etc)
> 15 tennis racquets
> 2 Golf kits
> 10 music systems
> 10 VCD/DVD players
> Topline crystalware, crockery
> Antiques and artifacts
(And this is only a partial list)BUNTY’S LOOT
He attacks at random and does practically no reconnaissance. Strikes between 1 am to 6 am, when people are at their sleepiest or most unguarded.He first goes to a residential area to pick a house. He comes back later in a swank car, and gains access by giving guards at the colony’s gates the house number. Mostly enters from the living room.
How was he caught?
Deputy Commissioner of Police (South) P. Kamraj and his special team led by Assistant Commissioner A.S. Cheema and Inspector Rajender Singh had identified Bunty’s modus operandi. The police had a hard time tracing Bunty for he did not sell stolen goods to a receiver twice. Investigating teams fanned out in Bangalore,Chennai and Chandigarh. “You name it and we had tried everything from electronic surveillance to grilling his relatives,his friends, his girlfriends,” says Satish Chandra, joint commissioner of police.
Finally, courtesy of informants, they homed in on his two Mayur Vihar flats and waited for him to show up.
The interesting part in this whole story is Bunty could never be proven as a thief in the courts!!! He received a jail sentence for possessing stolen goods!!! Can you believe this! Read on…
The Indian EXPRESS
August 01, 2003
Super Chor’ can’t be proven thief, jailed for keeping stolen goods
New Delhi, July 31: Bunty, the “super chor”, has been convicted for the first time, but not as a thief. A city court today could only sentence him for possessing stolen goods, not theft or trespassing, as the prosecution failed to get witnesses.
The court passed its order on three cases registered against Bunty, also known a Devinder Gupta, at Lajpat Nagar police station. The stolen property included jewellery, electronic goods, watches, silver cutlery.
Bunty is famous not just for his plucky modus operandi but the elite choice of stolen goods amounting to more than Rs 4 crore. Delhi Police are happy that he has at least been convicted since his first arrest in 1993.
The prosecution could not prove the charges of theft or trespass. So Metropolitan Magistrate Sanjiv Jain sentenced Bunty to three years of rigorous imprisonment in each of the three cases, with the sentences running concurrently. Bunty will also pay a fine of Rs 15,000.
His accomplice Vikram too was convicted. The court, however, noted that Bunty had over 60 cases against him and deserved no leniency.
Over the years, Bunty gained notoriety not only from the range of items he stole — teddy bears to cars — but the fact that he tricked the police several times.
When Bunty was arrested on April 26 last year, the Malviya Nagar police station was shocked to recover stolen goods worth crores from his Mayur Vihar flat. While 228 items were found at the Upkaar Apartments house, 136 stolen goods were recovered from Vikram’s house at Manu Apartments, Mayur Vihar.
Vikram Rathi, one of Bunty’s victims, read about the arrest in the newspapers and got his stolen property back after an identification session of goods. Officials said 200 cases were solved.
Bunty escaped the first time he was arrested in 1993. Later in Chennai, he feigned that he had consumed poison and escaped from hospital. Twenty days later, when the Chandigarh police got him, Bunty stole a sub-inspector’s scooter and drove away.
We have some more news clippings and faxed documents which kind of repeat what we have mentioned above and in part 1. If we find anything more on this, we sure will post this in on PFC.
Superchor, Bunty, Devender Singh… or even Lucky Singh… so is the movie based on the reality? Well we have all incidents covered in these two parts… so lets find out what incidents pop up in Oye Lucky Lucky Oye on Nov 26th! 
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
They have already included that stealing the dog bit on the second teaser, facts are indeed sometimes stranger than fiction..!
Wow! I had no idea about this Super Chor! It will be interesting to see if OLLO does show traces of him in its Lucky!
Thanks for sharing!
“Bunty stole a sub-inspector’s scooter and drove away.”
ROFLMAO
geez not sure to laugh or to feel bad for the victims..but this Bunty guy is damn interesting..no wonder Dibaker is making a movie on him..it would be soo much fun to watch Bunty on screen..eagerly waiting…waiting..waiting…
Yes! I knew Vikaspuri had an uncanny talent for churning out prodigal sons – first Daler Mehendi and now Bunty.
Hi OZ
Is the bunty is out of jail now???
this bunty should have done a cameo in OLLO !!
Random thought…
Did this Bunty have anything to do with the title of Shaad Ali’s con caper with AB Jr. and Rani Mukherji?
Faintly remember reading about Bunty, in the newspapers, as a kid… Definitely makes for an interesting personality this man… Damn, why am I looking forward to every Abhay Deol film (1st Dev.D and then OLLO)… I used to dislike him… Why do his choices seem so sane/intelligent (and that too not off late, but since the beginning of the career)… Seems that opinion (the feeling of dislike towards him, I mean) is set to change :(.
OZ: I dont quite believe in TA but whats with this article??
http://www.bollywoodhungama.com/news/2008/11/07/12156/index.html