Thieves have stolen computer parts worth more than Rs 2 lakh from a Salt Lake college, leaving behind coded messages that seem inspired by films like Dhoom 2 and Hollywood crime capers.

In the Hrithik Roshan-starrer, the thief (Roshan) would leave an "A" symbol after each operation.

In the Salt Lake college, the message was "CK IK 004 chor", written at five places.

Annex College of Management Studies is housed across two floors of a three-storeyed building in BD block. A broken lock on the main entrance led landlady Kamala Karmakar to raise the alarm on Friday morning.

"Our landlady alerted me and one of our employees," college director Vikash Kumar Singh said.

"When we reached the spot we saw that the apart from the lock on the main gate, the thief had broken the padlocks on two collapsible gates. One of the gates led to a wooden door, whose lock and bolting system were dismantled. Surprisingly, the wooden door has an electromagnetic locking system that is still intact."

The gang fled with a laptop, seven central processing units, three monitors, uninterruptible power supply systems, several ink cartridges of a printer, Wi-fi routers, data cards and some cash.

Before fleeing, the gang had written "CK IK 004 chor" in at least five places and also scribbled the letters "SHOI" and "SHOD" with a black marker pen.

"It seems the thieves challenged the college authorities. Possibly more than one person was involved," said Debashish Dhar, additional deputy commissioner, Bidhannagar.

An officer said the CCTV system of the college had been lying defunct for three weeks. "The college guard had gone home last night without taking the authorities' consent. Prima facie, it seems an insider's job," the officer said.

The college, with 500 students on its rolls, holds classes for BBA, BCA and other professional courses.

It also functions as a distance education centre for MBA and MCA courses.