2 jewellery store employees held for stealing gold items worth Rs 1.5 crore in Delhi's Lajpat Nagar

New Delhi: Two employees, including a woman, of a jewellery showroom were arrested for allegedly stealing gold jewellery worth over Rs 1.5 crore from the store in southeast Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar area, police said on Tuesday.

The accused have been identified as Gyan Prakash Prashad, a resident of Dabri, and Sarita Singh Pathak, a resident of UP’S Noida.

On Sunday, manager of a jewellers shop in Lajpat Nagar-II Rohit Bhuttan filed a complaint alleging misappropriation, theft of gold jewellery and falsification of accounts by manipulation of computerised sales against their billing executive Prashad and sales executive Pathak, a senior police officer said.

Prashad had been working at the showroom for the last seven years, while Pathak was working there for the last six years, they said.

The accused duo were apprehended and during questioning, they disclosed that they had been stealing the jewellery items from the showroom for the last several months and had kept the stolen items at their houses, Deputy Commissioner of Police (southeast) Rajesh Deo said.

On the instance of Prashad, gold jewellery weighing around 258 grams and cash of Rs 10,50,000 was recovered, he said.

Meanwhile, on the disclosure of Pathak, gold jewellery weighing 1968.40 grams and Rs 10,000 cash were recovered, the DCP said.

Prashad was responsible for the preparation of sale bills, stock data, inventory data etc. He identified a glitch in the software and using the same, the duo stole around 2.5 kg of gold jewellery worth more than Rs 1.5 crore, Deo said.

The entire stock of the showroom is uploaded on ERP software and sold through the same. For stealing the jewellery items, the duo would identify two pieces of jewellery, one lightweight item and the other heavyweight item, he said.

Pathak would then prepare a rough sale document for the lightweight item and give it to Prashad who prepared the bill on the computer, the DCP said.

As soon as the tag number of the light jewellery item was fed into the computer and its weight and price were reflected, which would be a meagre amount. In the next stage, the tag number of the first item was removed and the tag number of heavy jewellery was entered, police said.

However, due to a glitch in the software, despite feeding the tag number of heavier jewellery, the weight reflected on the bill was that of the lighter jewellery. Using this technique, the duo made payment for the lighterweight jewellery and in reality, took the heavier jewellery, the DCP said.

While making the payment, they claimed that it was purchased by a customer and later clandestinely carried away the heavier jewellery from the showroom. This way they avoided suspicion for several months because the sale and inventory position matched, Deo added.