A 59-year-old man, who perpetrated as many as 500 burglaries and thefts across the country to take home around Rs 5 crore in a 35-year-long innings as a lawbreaker, was arrested by a special squad of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar commissionerate police.

Despite amassing wealth, the arrested criminal, a college dropout, is left with little bank balance as he led a lavish lifestyle frequently air travelling to hill stations and major cities. He used to visit brothels and recklessly spent money on commercial sex workers, police said on Monday.

Hemant Dash, who passed intermediate pass from B.J.B College here, had tried his hands in petty crimes since 1986 when he was 24 years old. He had confined his criminal history to theft and burglary and did not graduate into bigger crimes. Though he committed a series of petty crimes in more than three decades, the series of offences that he had committed had remained largely undetected, said Umashankar Dash, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Bhubaneswar.

Though the accused Hemant successfully executed the offences with ease and expertise since the mid-eighties, he had fallen into police net only on two occasions. Earlier, he was arrested for the last time by the special squad in Bhubaneswar in 2018. However, the police had failed to elicit clues on the long list of crimes committed by the man all these years. He was also earlier arrested in Mumbai and Chennai and further involvement in cases outside the State is under verification.

He was later arrested in connection with two burglary cases in Puri in 2020 and was released in July this year. He was arrested today while planning to commit a robbery in Cuttack city, said DCP Dash.

Though Hemant amassed ill-gotten wealth in lakhs of rupees, he was found to be a pauper with a bank balance of meagre Rs 1400 as he led a lavish lifestyle.

He used to travel by air to different places including Gangtok, Kolkata, Patna, Mumbai, Chennai, Simla, Nainital and Jammu & Kashmir through flight on leisure trips and stayed in posh hotels with daily room charges ranging from Rs 7,000 to Rs 10,000. He used to frequent brothels in red light areas spending the stolen money on commercial sex workers.

He used to break open the locked up houses and commercial establishments by using a crowbar. The commission of burglaries by Hemant was both in day and night hours.