Telangana Police Trace Repeat Offences to Friendships Made Behind Bars
Around 1 a.m. on July 3, cab driver Angoth Thulja stopped his white sedan near Mangole X Road in Siddipet to use the washroom. When he returned, his passenger had driven away in his car. Thulja, 34, had been a driver for nearly nine years, and the night had begun as a routine long-distance booking.
The passenger, later identified as 32-year-old Pendyala Sudarshan, had hired the cab from L.B. Nagar in Hyderabad to Komuravelli Mallanna Temple in Siddipet, about 111 kilometres away, for a fare of ₹5,000. He said he wanted to visit the temple, stay overnight, and return the next afternoon. After a visit to the temple, the passenger said he was hungry and wanted biryani. Eventually, they began the return journey.
Near Mangole X Road, after crossing Kukunurpally, Thulja said he needed to stop. “I got out, leaving the AC on. When I turned around, he zoomed away in my car,” Thulja recalled. The car, worth about ₹2.5 lakh, was gone. Investigators later linked the passenger’s insistence on keeping the air-conditioner at full blast to a tactic known as ‘cold diuresis’, a physiological response that can cause the bladder to fill faster, creating an opportunity for escape.
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. Police identified Sudarshan as 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.
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”.
These 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. After their release, they allegedly reunited and carried out a fresh offence.
The group allegedly targeted 71-year-old retired SBI bank manager Dama Mohan near Sha Ghouse Hotel in Langer Houz on August 1. Police recovered 13.5 tolas of gold ornaments, ₹7.4 lakh in cash and two vehicles. Syed Asad, 46, an autorickshaw driver, allegedly played a key role in bringing the group together. Asad, Mohd Ibrahim and Syed Abdul Majeed were identified as suspected or history sheeters in Chandrayanagutta and Charminar, while Azar Hussain was a history sheeter in Santoshnagar police limits.
A senior police officer familiar with habitual offenders said such relationships were not unusual. “Prisoners will naturally communicate with one another because they are living in the same environment. Most conversations do not result in anything. But among habitual offenders, there can be instances where a contact made inside becomes useful after release.”
A prison acquaintance does not necessarily teach another person how to commit a crime. It could provide access to a network of contacts, safe hideouts, or information about vulnerable targets. The challenge for police, as these cases show, is tracking not just individual offenders but the informal alliances that form in correctional facilities and later resurface on the streets.
