Surat, Jul 28 (PTI) Three members of a family owning a safe deposit vault service in Gujarat’s Surat city have been arrested for allegedly breaking into their customers’ lockers and stealing gold worth about Rs 2.67 crore after incurring losses in the stock market, police said on Tuesday.
Deputy Commissioner of Police Raghav Jain said the trio conspired with a local keymaker and gradually looted 207 tolas of gold from six lockers at their Singanpor facility over the past year.
The Singanpor police have registered a case against Mahesh Deora, his sons Harsh and Harikrishna, owners of Nakshatra Safe House, and their accomplice Manilal, who is still absconding.
Jain said that earlier this month, one of the customers reported the theft of 63 tolas of gold from his locker at the Nakshatra Safe House’s branch near Singanpor crossroads.
“When we investigated the complaint, we found that valuables belonging to five other customers had also been stolen. So far, we have found that around 207 tolas of gold ornaments from six lockers, valued at approximately Rs 2.67 crore, were stolen,” Jain told reporters.
The Deora men were immediately detained after the complaint surfaced, and they admitted to preparing duplicate keys with Manilal’s help and breaking into six lockers to steal valuables, he said.
Harsh Deora had suffered losses of around Rs 3 crore in the stock market, prompting the family to hatch the conspiracy to recover the money, the official said.
Preliminary investigations indicated that the accused had been carrying out the thefts for about a year.
According to the first information report (FIR), the complainant, Ramesh Vaghani, a 50-year-old construction businessman, had rented a locker in his wife’s name in 2020 for Rs 1,700 per month.
He alleged that gold jewellery worth Rs 85.8 lakh had disappeared from the locker.
The complainant claimed that on July 14, he visited the locker facility to verify the CCTV footage, and examined the recordings for several hours before Harsh Deora allegedly stopped them, claiming that the hard disk storing the footage had failed and asking them to return the next day.
The explanation raised suspicion, following which he approached the police.
Jain said that Rs 15 lakh in cash has been recovered from the accused, who allegedly sold the stolen gold to a local jeweller.
“We are trying to recover as much of the stolen property as possible. The probe will continue,” he said.
Nakshatra Safe House has four branches in Surat, each housing around 600 to 700 lockers, he said, adding that no complaints had so far been received from customers of the other branches. PTI COR PJT ARU
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