NEW DELHI, Sept 26: CCTV Cameras, strongroom, iron chests, nothing could prevent the unscrupulous thieves from decamping with gold and diamond jewelleries worth about Rs 25 crores from a jewellery shop in Delhi.
The daring robbery may have been committed anytime between Sunday evening and Tuesday morning when the owner of the shop after opening the shutters came across the heist. The shop observes Mondays as weekly holidays.
The police said the thieves broke into the Umrao Singh Jewellers in Bhogal area in south Delhi’s Jangpura and escaped with gold and diamond ornaments worth ₹ 20-25 crores leaving behind just the ones made of silver. Besides clearing up the strongroom, the thieves also took away the diamond and gold jewellery kept for display in the shop.
The Nizamuddin police reached the spot on Tuesday morning after the theft was discovered. Investigating police officers are scanning CCTV cameras installed in the showroom to detect clues into the crime.
The police said the CCTV cameras were disconnected and a hole was made into the strongroom (locker) as part of the meticulous plan that led to this massive heist. The thieves entered from the terrace of the four-floor building and reached the ground floor where the strongroom was located, officials said. Then they drilled a hole into its wall to enter the strongroom where the ornaments were kept.
The showroom’s owner, who had locked the showroom on Sunday evening, discovered the theft when he opened the showroom on Tuesday morning. The police are going through whatever was recorded on CCTV before the thieves disconnected them. No one has been arrested yet.
The shop owner became suspicious after he saw the name panel of the shop broken in the morning. When he opened the shop’s shutter, he discovered that all the diamond and gold jewellery were missing.
The owner, and later the police, found that the security and alarm systems in the shop had been disabled and did not trigger any alarm when the intruders went in.
Further investigation into the case is on.
A similar incident was reported on Monday in Ambala in neighbouring Haryana where thieves broke into a cooperative bank and stole jewellery and other valuables. They drilled a hole in the wall using a gas cutter to enter the bank and broke open 32 lockers, police said. The theft came to light only on Monday morning since the bank was closed over the weekends.
(Manas Dasgupta)
