Hyderabad: This looks straight out of a whodunnit thriller! A person, who committed the famed Meerpet robbery in 2017, was caught on the basis of a crime committed way back in 1995, while he was a child.

According to the police, Habeeb, a cloth merchant and a resident of Mahmood Nagar in Rajandra Nagar, looked every inch normal. He has been passing off as a law abiding citizen for quite sometime. However, the police found his finger prints at several recent robberies in Meerpet, Balapur, Hayatnagar, Pahad-e-Sharif, LB Nagar, Chaitanyapuri, Vanasthalipuram and Narsingi. The police then sent his finger prints to the Finger Prints Bureau, which, to its shock, found that they were matching with the finger prints of Chotu, who was arrested in 1995 in connection with some crime.

As a child, he was sent to a juvenile home. Later, he came out only to continue his criminal activities. However, he had managed to successfully evade an arrest. However, he had his comeuppance on Monday, when the police found that his finger prints were the same as those of Chotu. It was released that Habeeb used names like Chotu and Yousuf to evade arrest. On questioning, he admitted to have comitted 26 robberies and thefts after release from the juvenile home

The LB Nagar police have nabbed Habeeb along with three others in connection with the Meerpet case. They recovered one kilo of gold and 2.5 kg of silver ornaments, together worth Rs.30 lakh in cash, from him.