Partnership in crime, incubated behind bars in Telangana

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The Central Prison at Cherlapalli, in Hyderabad. | Photo Credit: RAMAKRISHNA G.

Around 1 a.m. on July 3, cab driver Angoth Thulja stepped out of his white sedan near Mangole X Road in Siddipet to use the washroom. When he turned around, his passenger had driven away in his car.

What Thulja did not know then was that the passenger was not a first-time thief. Police would later identify him as 32-year-old Pendyala Sudarshan, a habitual property offender with 13 criminal cases against him. More significantly, investigators found that some of his alleged associates were men he had met in prison.

The discovery has drawn attention to a question that investigators in Telangana are increasingly encountering: can relationships formed between offenders behind bars become criminal associations after they walk free?

For Thulja, 34, the night had begun as a routine long-distance booking. For nearly nine years, he had made a living driving his own car. On July 3, Sudarshan booked him from L.B. Nagar in Hyderabad to Komuravelli Mallanna Temple in Siddipet, about 111 kilometres away. The fare was fixed at ₹5,000. The passenger said he wanted to visit the temple, stay overnight and return the next afternoon.

They went around the temple, but the passenger said he was hungry and wanted biryani. Eventually, they began the return journey towards Hyderabad.

Near Mangole X Road, after crossing Kukunurpally, Thulja said he needed to use the washroom. “I got out, leaving the AC on. When I turned around, he zoomed away in my car,” Thulja recalls.

The car, worth about ₹2.5 lakh, was gone. It was only later, during investigation, that Thulja realised the passenger’s insistence on keeping the air-conditioner running at full blast could have been deliberate. Police link the tactic to ‘cold diuresis’, a physiological response to cold that can cause the bladder to fill faster.

Siddipet police arrested Sudarshan on August 6 while he was allegedly travelling in another stolen car. They subsequently recovered the two cars along with a motorcycle.

According to Siddipet Police Commissioner S.Rashmi Perumal, Sudarshan had previously been jailed for theft. During one such period of imprisonment, he allegedly met Aman Kar, an Odisha resident involved in motorcycle-related crimes. After his release, Sudarshan travelled to Odisha and stayed with Kar.

Two other men allegedly involved in stealing the second car, identified as Raghu and Praveen, were described by a Kukunoorpally police officer as Sudarshan’s “jail friends”.

The men, investigators say, were not necessarily part of a single gang before they went to prison. They had different criminal histories and contacts. Their association developed in the same environment and, allegedly, continued after their release.

A recent case in Hyderabad offers another example. On August 17, Langer Houz police arrested six men in an attention-diversion theft. Police say some of them had met while serving three to five-year sentences in different cases.