Safety vault owners steal gold worth Rs 2.6 crore from customers' lockers; arrested
Three members of a family that ran a safe deposit vault service in Surat have been arrested for allegedly breaking open customers' lockers and stealing
Three members of a family that ran a safe deposit vault service in Surat have been arrested for allegedly breaking open customers' lockers and stealing gold worth about Rs 2.67 crore, police said on Tuesday. Investigators said the accused turned to theft after suffering heavy losses in the stock market. Police said the family, which owned Nakshatra Safe House, allegedly worked with a local keymaker to make duplicate keys and steal valuables from six lockers at their Singanpor branch over the past year. A case has been registered against Mahesh Deora, his sons Harsh and Harikrishna, and their alleged accomplice Manilal, who is absconding. Read Full Story Deputy Commissioner of Police Raghav Jain said the case came to light earlier this month after a customer complained that 63 tolas of gold were missing from his locker at the facility 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. He said the Deora family members were detained soon after the complaint surfaced, and they admitted to preparing duplicate keys with Manilal's help and opening six lockers to steal valuables. According to Jain, Harsh Deora had suffered losses of around Rs 3 crore in the stock market, which led the family to hatch the conspiracy to recover the money. Preliminary investigation has indicated that the thefts had been going on for about a year.
According to the 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 a month. He alleged that gold jewellery worth Rs 85.8 lakh had gone missing from the locker. The FIR said that on July 14, Vaghani went to the locker facility to check CCTV footage and watched the recordings for several hours before Harsh Deora allegedly stopped him and said the hard disk storing the footage had failed, asking him to return the next day. The explanation raised suspicion, after which he approached the police. Jain said police have recovered Rs 15 lakh in cash 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. He added that Nakshatra Safe House has four branches in Surat, each with around 600 to 700 lockers, and no complaints have so far been received from customers of the other branches. Ends
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