In a rare and well-planned case of gold pilfering, two employees of a multi-brand jewellery retail store were caught by the Amboli police after they allegedly kept stealing small quantities of jewellery from the store over a period of six months. While one of the accused, Ismail Marshad (30) worked as the manager of the outlet, the other accused, Manish Rawat (27), was a salesman. The duo allegedly managed to steal a total of Rs47 lakh worth of jewellery. The incident happened at Gitanjali Group of Jeweller's outlet, Maya Jewels, in Infiniti Mall, Andheri West.
The daring theft came to light after the group management conducted an internal audit two weeks ago. API Kishore Patil of Amboli police said, "In the internal audit, there was a massive mismatch of gold and it was learned than Rs47 lakh worth jewellery was missing. The Vice President of the Group, Rajesh Kumar Shah, approached us with a complaint."
According to the police, the CCTV in the store did not capture anything. That apart, the jewellery was stolen from the inside shelves and the tags and barcode were intact on the boxes, because of which nobody in the store found anything amiss or scanned the boxes. "This led the police and the management to believe that it could be the work of someone in the store, so we started questioning the staff. Meanwhile, Manish left the job and Ismail was on leave. We nabbed them from their homes and questioned them. They confessed to the crime, and were arrested last week," added Patil.
Both employees worked at the store over the last two years and were friends. The duo allegedly planned this theft six months ago. Ismail kept a tab of the cash counter, deposits and had access to all the jewellery cases and the two were also aware of the CCTV positioning. After the closure of business hours, the duo used to stay longer, under the pretext of closing the cash counter and used to pilfer gold ornaments like bangles, necklaces almost daily. This way, they managed to steal 1.5 kgs of gold in six months.
"The duo pawned half of the jewellery at a store in Bandra and put some in the bank. They also gifted the ornaments to friends and family," added Patil. While Murshad lived in Santacruz West, Rawat lived in Bhayander. Both were arrested under IPC sections 381 (theft by clerk or servant of property in possession of master) and 34 (common intention).
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