In Delhi, India, a 27-year-old phone thief kept escaping by defecating on himself when cornered — the stench held off officers long enough for him to run. It worked so well that police reportedly nicknamed it “poop and run.”
In March 2025, a team equipped with stink-proof masks finally arrested him. He is reported to have confessed.
Delhi is India’s capital, a metropolitan area of roughly 30 million people, where pickpocketing and phone theft in crowded markets and on public transit have long been a social problem. Across India, public sanitation infrastructure varies widely by area, and open defecation was a central theme of the government’s “Clean India” (Swachh Bharat) campaign. The suspect’s method was an unusual one that turned those sanitation conditions to his advantage.
From Arjun
In India, outwitting the police is an everyday thing — everyone’s got some angle. …Though this is less wit than nerve. Delhi’s markets might be the most crowded on earth, a paradise for a pickpocket. When this man got cornered, he didn’t run — he competed with his smell. Genius idea, zero dignity. In the end a single mask was enough to finish it.