Catching up with Bunty

Through the cobwebs and through two dusty iron grilles in the dimly-lit prison cell,Bunty Chor smiled hesitantly,the corners of his mouth stretching slowly,unsure at first,and then the full smile.

He didnt ask me who I was,or why I had come. He began rambling,saying he wasnt the man we were looking fornot the man who gave the Delhi Police sleepless nights for over a decade till his most recent arrest in April 2007,not the flamboyant thief who inspired two Bollywood films,Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! and Bunty aur Babli. Certainly not the man who had girls swooning over his drop-dead good looks,who had journalists smitten and cops in awe for being a brilliant,stylish thief.

We had come looking for Buntyurbane and suave,the man who owned a Batmans car,who spoke fluent English,who could imitate accents,who had a girlfriend who was more beautiful than Aishwarya Rai and who liked Rolls Royces and Toyotas but preferred stealing Skodas. But against the pale sunlight that streamed in through the back door of the meeting cell in Delhis Tihar Jail,Bunty a.k.a. Devender Sharma,now 38,looked tired. He is balding,his cheeks are sunken and his collarbones are prominent.

Bunty is in Jail No. 4,a high security prison,with over 550 cases against him. He has been convicted in some cases and has 12 cases pending against him.

The search

For two months,we had been trying to meet Bunty Chorworking the phones and doing the rounds of the DGPs office for permission to meet him.

The press had covered him in great detail after his arrest in 2005,when his stunning exploits made him almost enigmatic. Scriptwriters came looking for his story. Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! is his story. No two ways about it, says Rajinder Singh,the Lodhi Road SHO who led the special teams that nabbed Bunty in 2002 and 2007.

But in the last one-and-a-half years that Bunty has been in Tihar,nobody had come to see him. I can let you see Afzal Guru,but not Bunty Chor, said B.K. Gupta,Director General of Prisons,Tihar,when we first approached him,flashing our press cards. We hit a wall. We tried everything from sending questionnaires to jail officials to touring the city,hoping to find Bunty in peoples stories,neighbours tales,anywhere.

For days,we dialled the Tihar control room number,hoping someone would pick up. Finally on an early Monday morning in April,someone did and I told him I wanted to meet Bunty. He asked me who I was and I said I was his childhood friend from New York. That worked and the following Friday,I flashed my New York State driving licence and walked in.

The man,the meeting

Bunty Chor yahan hai. Kaun hai uske liye, a voice announced at the meeting cell. I hurriedly whisked out a crumpled paper from my pocket but Bunty had already started talking. He was too quick,too fuzzy for me to be able to write down his words.

That evening,as the hours stretched endlessly and the policemen around me stood laughing,Bunty almost convinced me he was a rambling madman. But I had been warnedRajinder Singh had told me that Bunty would pretend to be insane,another of his ploys to get out of jail.

I asked Bunty if life in prison was tough and he said,Yes. Then he began to ramble,his eyes shifting,dancing and wild. He first told me he wanted to build a submarine after he got out of prison. Then,he said his submarine would fly too,crisscrossing the skiesto London,America,Africa,everywhere.

No,dont call me Bunty. Bunty is dead. I am 130 years old. I have no name, he said,his eyes scanning the faces of the policemen standing across him. They are all against me, he said.

He had storieshow he was caught in Chennai,how they called him Hari Thapa,how he had romped and kicked but Rajinder Singh had kidnapped him and brought him to Tihar.

Bunty held his ground. In the dark,narrow cell,his dreams ran wild. Thats what he had been doing all his lifemade the fanciest of dreams seem mundane.

Bunty stole for the kick of it. If he liked a car that was parked behind another one,he would break into the one in front,park it neatly and drive out with his favourite car, Rajinder Singh says. Thats how he wasstylish.

According to another incident in the police files,when confronted with a Rottweiler,Bunty threw chunks of chicken at the dog and kept him busy while he went about his work. The owner of the Rottweiler later admitted the dog was no good.

But these arent the stories you hear in Vikaspuri,where Buntys mother lived years ago. His family has long disowned him. A group of children playing cricket broke into a feverish chant of Oye Lucky,Lucky oye8230; when we asked them about Bunty. We have never seen him. But we have seen the film, a 10-year-old said.

Bunty,a Class IX dropout,was first arrested in 1993 in New Delhi but gave cops the slip. He was arrested again,this time from Chennai,where he ate glass pieces in judicial custody to get himself into a hospital,from where he fled. Twenty days later,he was arrested againin Chandigarhbut he escaped,riding off on a sub-inspectors scooter. Later he was caught in Bangalore while trying to sell his loot and remained in custody till 1998 and then in Belgaum jail till October 2000.

After he got out,he continued his pilfering spree,stealing anything he fancieda dog,expensive cutlery,watches,photos,jewellery,anything. He was arrested later in 2002 after he committed more than 200 cases of theft. This was when Rajinder Singh recovered goods worth Rs 5 crore.

Singh can never forget the little auction they had at the police station when the victims came to claim their loot. Bunty remembered each loot,where it was from,who owned it and volunteered to distribute it all himself, he said. He had an amazing memory.

And amazing luck. But it ran out a year after he was released from jail in 2006,when he promised Singh he would lead a straight life. But when cases of luxury cars being stolen were reported from Defence Colony and Malviya Nagar in south Delhi,Singh knew Bunty was at it again. After a tip-off,Singh again arrested Bunty from a house in Noida.

By then,Bunty had amassed wealth tagged at Rs 6 crore,lived in expensive hotels and owned a fleet of luxury cars. And then,he fell in love. He showered Jyoti with expensive gifts,including a diamond set that the police said they let her keep because nobody had come to claim it. But she dumped him. He was miserable and cried often,Rajinder Singh said. If she had stuck to him,he would have quit stealing. He told me that. He loved her, Singh said.

But that afternoon,Bunty denied his love too. Yes,he had a Nepali wife,but he had to find her after he got out of prison,he said. And then,he said,Madam,tell them to release me. I have to go to London. Thats where I am from, he said. Give me your number. I will call once I am out of here.

He never asked for my name or my number.