Surendranagar, Dec 23 (PTI) An unidentified man travelling in a private luxury bus allegedly stole a co-passenger’s bag containing gold ornaments worth Rs 88.55 lakh here in Gujarat, police said on Thursday.
The incident took place on Wednesday night when the bus briefly halted at a hotel on Rajkot-Ahmedabad Highway, they said.
Based on a complaint given by Shailesh Patodia, a jeweller from Rajkot who was carrying the bag containing 1,789 gm of ornaments, the Joravarnagar police in Surendranagar registered an FIR on charge of theft against unidentified persons, an official said.
The hotel’s CCTV footage revealed that the accused got down from the bus hurriedly with the bag during the halt, sat in a car parked nearby and fled from the spot with the valuables, Joravarnagar police station’s sub-inspector N H Qureshi said.
As per the FIR, Patodia regularly visits Indore in Madhya Pradesh to sell his gold ornaments. On Wednesday evening, the jeweller along with his friend Haresh Chheladia, boarded an Indore-bound private luxury bus from Greenland circle of Rajkot.
“When the bus took a halt at the hotel on Rajkot-Ahmedabad highway at around 10 pm, Patodia and his friend got down to attend nature’s call. When they came back after two-three minutes, the bag containing the gold jewellery worth Rs 88.55 lakh was missing from their seat,” the official said quoting the FIR.
When Patodia inquired with a watchman who was managing the parking, he told him that a person carrying a bag got down from the same bus and quickly sat in a car, which was parked there before the bus arrived. The watchman said the car driver drove off in full speed as soon as the person carrying the bag sat in it, as per the FIR.
Later, when the bus driver counted the number of passengers, it came to light that one person, who had booked a seat opposite to that of Patodia, was missing.
“It is possible that more than one person were involved in this pre-planned theft. We are probing the case from various angles,” the police official said. PTI COR PJT GK GK
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