A slipper gave away a thief and landed him in police custody for stealing two mobile phones and some cash from a house in New Alipore early on Wednesday.

The youth scaled a pipe of the building on Shitalatala Road in Sahapur to enter the first-floor bedroom of a couple and managed to flee with the cellphones and money when a slight sound woke up the man sleeping in the room.

Arindam Chatterjee, 37, was woken up by a sound around 2.30am and spotted someone fleeing through an open window. He dialled 100.

“I saw someone standing at the window and peeping outside. It was dark and my first thought was that it was my wife. But then as I looked harder I could see the person slipping out of the window. I was shocked and jumped out of my bed before rushing towards the window. A youth was scaling down the wall by stepping on the sunshades,” Chatterjee told Metro on Thursday.

Officers of New Alipore police station reached the house soon after and found a single slipper lying near the boundary wall. A search in the neighbourhood led them to New Alipore railway station where they spotted a youth wearing the other slipper from the same pair.

“The youth was found sitting on a platform at New Alipore railway station. We looked at his feet and found him wearing one slipper — the one whose pair was found near the boundary wall of the house where a theft had been reported,” an officer of New Alipore police station said.

The youth was arrested from the spot. A search yielded the two mobile phones and stolen cash.

Police identified the accused as Sheikh Rakesh, 19, a resident of South 24- Parganas.

The window through which the youth had entered the house opens towards a deserted stretch in the backyard of the two-storey building where Chatterjee’s in-laws live, he said,

Chatterjee, his wife, sister-in-law, brother-in-law, niece and mother-in-law were at home at the time of the theft but no one else had heard anything.

Rakesh had initially misled police from Sealdah to Sonarpur, saying he lived there, before finally taking them to his home in Dolarhat where police found 13 stolen mobiles.

Rakesh was produced in court on Wednesday and remanded in police custody.