A theft at director Soham Shah’s (Kaal) house around 3.40 a.m. on 26th May has left him shaken. The teenaged thief fled with Soham’s cell phone, his chain and pendant, and two hand bags of Soham’s costume designer-wife, Binal Shah. The bags were left behind by the thief on the terrace of the adjacent bungalow but the air pods, cash amounting to around Rs. 4,000 and their car keys, all of which were in the hand bags, were taken away by the thief.
The CCTV footage from the adjacent bungalow showed that there were two teenaged thieves who first entered the bungalow owner’s house, took out a cold water bottle from the refrigerator there, went to the bungalow terrace, and then climbed the scaffolding in Soham’s building to reach his fourth-floor flat at Juhu. There was repair work going on in Soham’s building but it had been left incomplete due to the lockdown. Because of that, the grills in two balconies of Soham’s house were not fitted back.
Soham was awakened by some sound in his bedroom on 26th around 3.40 a.m. and was shocked to see a young boy in a white shirt and jeans standing around a foot away from his bed. Soham screamed loudly, which frightened the boy who ran towards the balcony from where he had entered. Soham picked up a hockey stick, lying in the balcony, to beat the robber but the stick hit the scaffolding instead. By this time, the thief jumped on to the scaffolding and within a split-second, he had reached the first floor scaffolding with the stolen items. Seemingly, the thief and his accomplice hid for a while and then returned to the bungalow terrace where they emptied the contents of the two hand bags. They left the hand bags on the terrace and also did not take Binal’s credit cards. Says Soham, “I had this fear about a probable theft in my house because the grills had been removed and also because the scaffolding is still intact. That is why I had bought hockey sticks to use as a weapon if and when the need would arise.”
While the police is still investigating, there was another theft in Jal Darshan building (in which Govinda and producer Bobby Raaj have flats) in the same vicinity two days later. It is suspected that the same two young thieves were behind the Jal Darshan robbery too.