MUMBAI, June 4 -- A thief who shimmied up pipes on buildings near railway tracks and broke into homes to steal has been arrested, revealing an impressive booty. The man, a native of Bihar who lived in a rented flat in Malwani in Malad, had used the proceeds of crime to book a flat in Malad, buy a plot of land in Bihar, and collect a small pile of gold in his flat. Malad police said Ranjitkumar Upendrakumar Singh, 44, used an ingenious array of disguises to escape detection. He either dressed as a woman, an early morning jogger or an office-goer so that he would melt into the crowd in case police scanned CCTV footage to identify him. Police have recovered Rs.13 lakh from Singh's bank account, and melted gold and silver worth Rs.37 lakh from his flat. A preliminary investigation revealed that Singh had sent Rs.10 lakh to his wife in Bihar to buy a plot of land. He had also given Rs.6 lakh as a token for a brand new flat in Malwani - all the money came from the proceeds of crime. While police are aware of 13 break-ins and thefts committed by Singh in the last three months, they are yet to find out how many years he had been breaking into homes and stealing. The incident that led to Singh's arrest on Monday had taken place on March 17, when police received a complaint from the resident of a building near the Malad railway station. The complaint had stated that a thief had climbed through his window on the first floor and made away with valuables worth Rs.4.5 lakh from a cupboard in the house. The thief had broken in while the complainant and his wife were asleep in the bedroom. Crime detection officer with the Malad police, police inspector Tushar Sukhdeve checked the CCTV footage in the locality but couldn't detect anyone who looked suspicious at the time when the crime was committed. The only person who stood out was a woman walking on the street, wearing a burkha over a long dress. "Then, on May 27, another robbery took place in our jurisdiction. Our investigation revealed that in fact five thefts had been reported in Goregaon, Kandivali and Borivali at around the same time. And, yet, CCTV footage revealed nothing suspicious. What linked the robberies was that they had all been committed in flats next to railway tracks and had taken place at night," said Sukhdeve. Hemant Sawant, assistant commissioner of police, Malad, said CCTV footage from these areas revealed either a man or a woman with their faces covered either by a mask, a hoodie, or a burkha. The burkha was a dead giveaway. "That's when the penny dropped," Sawant said. Police realised it was a disguise after linking it to the March 17 break-in. Their next move; uncover the thief's identity and track him down. Police studied the CCTV footage of all the crime spots, once again, and spotted a man whose gait matched that of the suspected thief, including the 'woman' in a burkha in some of the footage. Singh was detained and his Malwani house searched. Police found a machine that melted metal, which Singh had used to melt down jewellery he stole, to recover gold and silver. Ironically, police also found around 100 grams of gold jewellery in a trash can. Singh had discarded it as artificial jewellery, as he was not trained to recognise gold. "We arrested the accused on Monday, just a day before he was to fly to Bihar, to make the final payment for the plot he had booked. We are trying to find out where he had bought the metal melting machine from, and how many more houses had he robbed," said Sukhdeve....