Delhi kalash thief held from UP’s Hapur

Delhi Police arrested Bhushan Verma for stealing a gold kalash worth over ₹1 crore from a puja pandal, recovering the item and two others.

NEW DELHI

The kalash in question. (HT)

Five days after a gold kalash (urn)—studded with diamonds, rubies and emeralds and worth over ₹1 crore—was stolen from a puja pandal outside the Red Fort, Delhi Police have arrested a 50-year-old man from his residence in Hapur, near Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh, officers said on Monday. The stolen kalash has been recovered from his possession, they said.

Joint commissioner of police Surendra Kumar identified the accused as Bhushan Verma, a resident of Hapur. His associates, Gaurav Kumar Verma, who received the stolen products and Ankit Patil, who acted as the mediator between the two, were also arrested, police said.

“The man searches YouTube for religious events and knows that people use expensive utensils during these events. For this one also, he found the puja schedule and came to the event on September 1 and 2 for recce. He borrowed clothes from the worshippers and pretended to be one of them,” Kumar said.

The gold kalash (urn) in question was stolen from a puja pandal outside the Red Fort, where a religious festival of the Jain community took place on Wednesday. Two other gold utensils were also stolen, the police revealed later, adding that they were also recovered.

The kalash weighs about 760 grams and is studded with gems weighing 115 grams. The theft took place when the crowd was distracted for about an hour when Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla was visiting the venue.

The complainant in the case, 66-year-old Sudhir Kumar Jain, a businessman and a resident of Civil Lines, said a 10-day religious festival was underway at the August 15 Park from August 28 and concluded on Saturday.

A stage was set up for the ceremonies, and only designated individuals dressed in dhoti-kurta were allowed to sit on it. Jain told the police he brought the urn from home every day for the prayers.

Jain said that the urn was present close to him on the stage till about 9.20am on Wednesday. “I took the urn to the venue for prayers every day and brought it back. It has been in our family since my father’s time. On Wednesday, the urn was right there but when the Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla came, we all looked at him and stayed engaged for the next hour. The man picked up the urn around 9.25am,” Jain told HT.

When Jain started to wrap up around 10.20am, he realised that the urn was gone, he said. He then registered an e-FIR in the matter on Wednesday.

In the CCTV footage of the cameras installed at the venue by the festival organisers, seen by HT, the suspect was seen walking from the prayer venue to the kitchen area, where he transfers the urn to a green-and-black cloth bag and then walks away with it.

During the probe, investigators said, the accused had conducted a recce for two days and stayed with other worshippers for hours to mingle with them and gain their trust. “He came and went back to his home on both days and during his time here, he understood the loopholes of the security,” said Kumar.

Kumar said that CCTV footage captured his face clearly and after enhancing the image, they uploaded the photograph to an investigation software, which identified him and also a phone number he had previously used. “Using the IMEI number attached to that phone number, we were able to identify the number he was currently using,” the officer said.

Once the accused was identified, police accessed his criminal dossier and ascertained that he was involved in a 2016 theft case reported from BLK Hospital, where he was caught red-handed by security personnel while stealing purses.

Subsequently, through technical surveillance, he was traced to Hapur in Uttar Pradesh and with the help of the UP Police, he was arrested in the early hours of Monday.

Investigators said that the accused committed a similar theft from a puja pandal of the Jain community at Rishabh Vihar, which falls under the Anand Vihar police jurisdiction, on August 8.

After committing the crime, the accused went home and got in touch with Patil to hand over the gold utensils, who then sold it to Gaurav. Molten gold was recovered from the possession of the accused, police said.