Three held for robbing Hyderabad jeweller’s employee of valuables worth ₹2.62 crore

The accused had taken the duo to Bhiwandi, assaulted them, and fled with cash, gold biscuits, diamonds and gold jewellery worth around ₹2.62 crore. The arrested have been identified as Mahender Chandanmal Jaat, 23, Manoj Jait Singh and Prashant Chaudhary

MUMBAI: Three persons from Rajasthan have been arrested for allegedly posing as Delhi crime branch sleuths and abducting two employees of a Hyderabad-based jeweller from Sion last week.

Three held for robbing Hyderabad jeweller’s employee of valuables worth ₹2.62 crore

The accused had taken the duo to Bhiwandi, assaulted them, and fled with cash, gold biscuits, diamonds and gold jewellery worth around ₹2.62 crore.

The arrested have been identified as Mahender Chandanmal Jaat, 23, Manoj Jait Singh and Prashant Chaudhary.

Stolen booty worth ₹1.70 crore was recovered, said Prashant Kadam, deputy commissioner of police of zone 4. The police said they have recovered 7 gold biscuits, weighing 100 grams each, gold ornaments weighing 400 grams and ₹16 lakh from Jaat, three gold biscuits, weighing 100 grams each and 200 grams gold ornaments and ₹2 lakh from Singh.

On June 1, the four people had abducted two employees of Naredi Jewellers when the duo were on their way to Bharat Diamond Bourse in Bandra Kurla Complex to deliver the valuables. Naredi Jewellers has an office in BKC where the owner of the firm, Santosh Naredi was waiting to receive the valuables.

“The duo—Chaudhary and jewellery-maker Hariram Ghatiya—travelled in a luxury bus from Hyderabad and got off at a bus stop on Dr B A Road near Highway Apartment in Chembur. Soon after they alighted from the bus, a four-wheeler stopped near them and the four occupants of the vehicle, who posed as Delhi police crime branch officers, flashed their identity cards. They asked the jeweller and his employee to sit inside their vehicle,” a police officer said.

“The accused then told the duo that they were carrying illegal jewellery and they were being taken to Delhi. However, on reaching Bhiwandi, they stopped the vehicle on Mumbai-Nashik Highway at an isolated spot and started beating the duo,” the officer added.

Later, they dropped Chaudhary and Ghatiya on the road and fled with 20 gold biscuits weighing around 100 grams each, five gold and diamond necklaces, three bracelets, two gold rings and one gold chain, ₹27 lakh in 1,350 notes of ₹2,000 denomination and their mobile phones, totalling worth around ₹2.62 crore.

After examining the sequence of events, the police suspected involvement of an insider and interrogated the two employees separately. Chaudhary eventually spilled the beans and revealed that he had given a tip-off to the robbers, a police officer said.

The officer added that the robbers had brought the four-wheeler from Rajasthan and used a fake registration number of Tamil Nadu in an attempt to mislead the police. Preliminary probe also revealed that the gang had followed the bus, on which the jeweller and his employee travelled, from Pune.

The interrogation of Chaudhary revealed identities of others involved in the crime and based on the information provided by him, the police sent two teams to Rajasthan and nabbed Jaat and Singh. Chaudhary was already in the police custody.

The trio was produced in a court on Friday and remanded in police custody till June 18.

The police are now looking for two more suspects and a team has been dispatched to track them, Kadam added.