After more than 90 break-ins, the game's up for India's 'Robin Hood'

AN INDIAN "Robin Hood" who stole from the rich and donated part of his haul to the poor is behind bars after falling foul of his own sheriff of Nottingham.

By day, Madhukar Mohandas Prabhakar was a respectable restaurant owner in the city of Pune in western India. But by night, he used planes or taxis to commute the 100 miles to Mumbai to carry out a string of audacious burglaries.

He was regarded as a pillar of his community and was well liked by locals, not least for his generosity in donating funds for the building of a Hindu Ganesh temple.

But Indian police say that when he was not to be found in his popular MM Restaurant, Prabhakar adopted a rather different persona; that of a prolific housebreaker. Officers say his exploits resulted in more than 90 break-ins in Mumbai. He would arrive in the evening, carry out a raid, and leave the city before dawn.

But last Saturday, his luck ran out. Prabhakar is said to have left Pune in a taxi and arrived in Mumbai in the evening. There, he broke into a house and stole jewellery worth more than 2,000.

However, he was picked up by police carrying out a routine sweep operation and it was only later they realised the scale of his operations.