Former Thane office boy arrested for ₹1.30 crore jewellery theft

To mislead the police, the accused had thrown his mobile phone in a running truck and was hiding in a forest area in Mount Abu, Rajasthan

Mumbai: The Naupada police in Thane on Monday arrested a former office boy of Virasat Jewellers in Thane for allegedly fleeing with jewellery worth ₹1.30 crore last month. To mislead the police, the accused had thrown his mobile phone in a running truck and was hiding in a forest area in Mount Abu where he had reached by travelling on state transport buses only at night.

The accused was earlier booked by the LT Marg police in Mumbai in a theft case . (File photo)

The accused, identified as Vishalsingh Rajput, 29, a resident of Gujarat, was newly married. He was earlier booked by the LT Marg police in Mumbai in a theft case in which he hatched a plan with three more friends to do away with hawala money worth ₹7 lakh. But after execution of that plan, his friends ditched him and didn't meet him at a pre-fixed spot and distributed the money amongst themselves, said police officers.

According to the officials, he joined as an office boy in the Virasat Jewellers, owned by Yashwant Poonamia, in the month of February this year. He gained the trust of his owner and last month was assigned the work to bring some jewellery from Sidharth Jeweller to Virasat Jeweller. He picked up the jewellery from Sidharth Jewellers and took some more jewellery from Virasat as well and fled with jewellery worth ₹1.30 crore.

Police officials said the accused not only took care to not leave any of his personal documents behind, but also threw his mobile handset in a running truck.

The Naupada police received the complaint about the misappropriation and Mangesh Bhange started investigation under the guidance of deputy commissioner of police Subhash Burse, assistant commissioner of police Priya Dhakane and senior police inspector Abhay Mahajan.

After checking hundreds of hours of CCTV footage, the police found that the accused had changed auto rickshaws at different locations and later became untraceable.

According to officials, Bhange then started digging for information about his residence and reached his native village in Gujarat. Though he did not get any lead about the accused, the officer was continuously in touch with a few of his sources in Gujarat through whom he came to know about the accused was seen in Mount Abu. Accordingly, a police team went to Mount Abu and searched for him for ten days and got his location in a forested area.

"The accused was not continuously staying at Mount Abu. He would take shelter in jungle, crematoriums or such other remote places during the day and would take different buses at night and travelled to Ahmedabad and from there to Jaipur," said Bhange.

"A week later he returned to the forested area in Mount Abu. We got to know about his shelter in the jungle and scanned the place and finally nabbed him on June 7. We have recovered all the stolen jewellery worth ₹1.10 crore from his bag," Bhange added.