I was framed, officer!

These 10 thefts show that some people steal not for money but for political clout, for the flex and for a little snack

- Sulogna Mehta

When Vincenzo Peruggia stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911, he was considered a thief in France, but a patriot in Italy.

He slipped in, dressed as a museum employee, took the frame off the wall, lugged it into a stairwell, extracted the canvas, hid it under his white smock and slipped out. The theft is what catapulted da Vinci's work to global fame. When he was caught two years later, he claimed he intended to return it to Italy.

In 2003, unidentified thieves stole priceless works by Pablo Picasso, Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh from UK's Whitworth Art Gallery. Then, they left them in a nearby public toilet with the message, “The intention was not to steal, only to highlight woeful security”. The slightly damaged works, worth around £4 million, were restored and re-displayed, now under closer watch.

We don't know if the Nizam of Hyderabad ever ate from his 2kg, three-tier, jewel-encrusted tiffin box. But we do know that the two thieves who made off with a haul from the Nizam's Museum in 2018 did. The offenders were caught within a week of the theft, and were living it up at a luxury hotel in Mumbai. One man confessed to eating from the box every day.