Booty found; guarding it is a huge task

Recovery of 17.5 kg gold and Rs2.9 lakh that the Pune police crime branch made within 24 hours after the biggest gold heist in Pune’s history took place at Manappuram Finance’s Bhavani Peth branch has yielded praise for the police.

However, the bigger responsibility ahead, which is keeping the police on its toes, is to keep the booty safe.

Most of the recovered gold are in the form of ornaments. To add to the woes of Pune police, they do not have a treasury or safety vault to keep the seized gold. The recovery made in various cases is normally kept in the malkhanas of the police stations concerned.

A major recovery of Rs50 lakh was made in the 1990s in the Patil family murder case and the seized booty was kept in the government treasury once the work of drawing the panchanamas was over. Later in 2002, the police recovered tonnes of fake stamps and stamp papers from the members of fake stamp racket led by Abdul Karim Telgi. That recovery was kept in a recreational hall at the Swargate police lines.

However, since there are several artefacts in the gold recovery in the heist case, the work of drawing panchanama reports is proving to be time consuming. That is why the top brass of Pune police has fortified the crime branch office.

Anant Shinde, additional commissioner of police (crime) told DNA, “This is for the first time that such huge quantity of gold has been recovered. Hence, we have made adequate security arrangements.” Sunil Deshmukh, crime branch (unit 1) said, “Apart from the six armed constables summoned from the headquarters, our own staffs too is protecting the recovery.”