‘I put everything into this’: Anchorage business owner picks up the pieces after costly robbery

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Basanti Dogra had exciting plans by starting the new year off on a positive note by moving her new business, Basanti Beauty Lab, into a brand new location in Anchorage’s Spenard neighborhood.

Little did she know someone else had plans of their own.

During the early hours of Sunday, Dec. 29, a man can be seen breaking into Dogra’s business on Northern Lights Boulevard only two weeks after she moved in.

The man can be seen looking up at a surveillance camera mounted on the business center shortly before smashing through the front window with a rock.

“I put everything into this business,” Dogra said. “It’s only been a year since I sold my townhouse. I literally put everything into this business and to have it taken is just so traumatizing. I feel like my sense of safety is gone, and for someone to just come in and take all of my belongings, I feel very violated and it’s just very disappointing.”

Due to the placement of the business center’s security camera, the actual act was not caught on camera, but the aftermath was evident, leaving Dogra to pay roughly $1,200 in repairs, not to mention the value of the items stolen.

She estimates $6,000 worth of inventory was taken, everything from tools, a Dyson blow dryer, and iPads to her point-of-sale system and high-end expensive skincare products she said a thief would likely have no use for.

Dogra said because she had only been in the building for two weeks, her own security system had not yet been set up as she was waiting to get through the holidays before having it installed.

“I was in between insurances, so none of it is going to be covered,” Dogra said.

“You can’t sell these products without a professional license. All these products have to be applied in the right measurements on prepped skin, so it’s dangerous as well for him to have it … some of my lash lift tools and the chemical peels are completely useless to him,” Dogra lamented.

She said the thief even stole her six-year-old son’s candy, as well as crewneck shirts with her stepfather’s eagle wolf design, an Indigenous art piece she intended to use for her company’s logo. She estimates the prints likely had little monetary value, but plenty of sentimental value.

As Dogra reschedules clients and waits for her stolen products to be replaced, she must reconcile with starting over from scratch, in particular as the burglary resulted in the loss of her life savings.

A report was filed with Anchorage police, but so far, Dogra said she has not received any updates and no detective has been assigned to the case to her knowledge. She hopes coming forward with her story not only brings awareness to her own situation, but what she feels is a larger concern of recent theft within the community as a whole.

“I think the community does need to be aware of this, that this is going on and that we have to take those protective measures and stick together,” Dogra said. “This kind of behavior shouldn’t be allowed, and we should all stand together and fight this. We don’t want this to happen to anybody else.

“I hope we catch this guy, and I hope, you know, thieves get the message that they can’t do this.”

In October, WooHoo! Ice Cream on Arctic Boulevard — just a little over two miles away from Basanti Beauty Lab — was also broken into under similar circumstances. Much like Dogra’s shop, another hooded man can be seen on the shop’s surveillance camera breaking into the ice cream shop’s glass door with a rock, lending credence to Dogra’s suggestion that her latest theft case is yet another in a rising trend of local business break-ins with no answers.

Alaska’s News Source reached out to the Anchorage Police Department for an update on where Dogra’s case stands and to ask if the department has seen an increase in business-related break-ins but is still waiting on a response.

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