India Today ·
Delhi servant held for Rs 3 crore burglary to fund Nepal cafe dream
Delhi Police have arrested a house servant for allegedly stealing jewellery and cash worth several crores from a Timarpur home. Investigators say the stolen wealth was meant to bankroll a move to Nepal and a new restaurant-cafe venture.
A 22-year-old house servant has been arrested for allegedly burgling a residence in Delhi and stealing jewellery and cash worth several crores to fund a planned move to Nepal and open a restaurant-cafe, police said on Thursday. His father-in-law and a 17-year-old boy were also apprehended in the case.
Police said they recovered 117 gold and diamond jewellery items worth around Rs 3 crore, Rs 4.34 lakh in cash, and the bags used to carry the stolen valuables. The accused were identified as Anil Kamat, a domestic worker from Bihar's Supaul, his father-in-law Dev Chandra Sah, 49, a vegetable vendor, and the juvenile, a resident of Jharkhand's Giridih who also worked as a house servant.
The burglary was reported on September 6 from the first floor of a house on Mall Road in north Delhi's Timarpur area. Complainant Anshul Gupta told police that his elder brother Anuj Gupta and his family had gone abroad on September 2, and the family later learnt that the house had been burgled. Police said two domestic workers hired by the family the previous month were missing after the incident and their mobile phones were switched off. A case was registered at Timarpur police station.
During the investigation, police examined footage from more than 300 CCTV cameras across Delhi, Bihar and Jharkhand. The suspects were tracked from Mall Road to ISBT, New Delhi Railway Station and then towards Mukarba Chowk. Police said technical surveillance and cyber intelligence helped establish their links to Bihar and Jharkhand. A team was sent to Darbhanga, where CCTV footage showed Kamat and the juvenile at the railway station on September 8. The juvenile was later traced to his relatives' home in Giridih and apprehended on September 10. Kamat was traced to the area near Simrahi in Supaul district, where his in-laws lived. When police raided the premises, they did not find him there, but Sah was present and questioned.
Police said a red bag matching the one seen in CCTV footage was found hidden under a bed, while another bag containing cash was recovered from sacks of hay. During questioning, the accused allegedly told police that the jewellery had been buried under the floor of another room. Officials said the jewellery bag was recovered from a depth of about five feet after around an hour of digging. Sah was later arrested for allegedly possessing stolen property and sent to judicial custody, while Kamat was detained by local police in the Pratapganj area and formally arrested on September 16. Police said Kamat and his associates had allegedly planned to travel to Nepal, open a restaurant or cafe, and use the proceeds of the burglary to set up a lavish lifestyle. They also said Kamat had earlier been involved in a burglary case involving around Rs 1.25 crore in the Shalimar Bagh area. The case, police added, was cracked through CCTV analysis, technical surveillance, cyber intelligence and ground-level investigation across three states.