Jaipur:
The Jaipur Police are looking for a 20-year-old girl who stole diamonds worth Rs 25 lakh from a jewellery shop in Vaishali Nagar area and vanished. The accused, Jyoti, showed her remarkable sleight of hand and stole seven pieces of jewellery at a time when the shop was filled with customers and attendants.
Jyoti had been working at JKJ Jewellers for 15 days. The police are now analysing the footage from the CCTVs which captured the act.
In the first part of the footage, Jyoti is seen sitting quietly behind the counter at the shop and as soon as her co-worker goes out she makes a cunning move, artfully pocketing some diamonds.
A little later, she gets a second chance. As other co-workers go out for lunch, she first takes some pieces of jewellery out of a box and keeps them enclosed in her palm all the while maintaining a calm and deceptive demeanour.
Then in an audacious move, she quickly puts the diamonds inside her t-shirt. She makes no hurried movements, but quietly gets up and tries to walk out of the showroom.
When the security guard stops her, the girl tells him that she is going to buy medicines. The guard insists she take permission first from the owner, but she tells him the owner is busy with some customers and she would take only a few minutes. She then makes a quick exit.
The security man waited for 10 minutes, but Jyoti didn't return. He then raised an alarm.
"When we did a stock checking after she walked out, we found 7 pieces of jewellery missing , of which three were rings and four ear rings made of solitaire diamond. She took about Rs 25 lakh worth of jewellery," said Kailash Mosun, partner, JKJ jewellers.
Jyoti had joined this jewellery showroom only a fortnight back. When the police examined her documents they found them to be fake, but the roll number of her school leaving certificate helped them uncover her real identity.
"She gave an ID card with a fake address and the owners did no verification on her. Still we managed to trace some of her family in Delhi," said Vinod Kumar, Investigating officer, Jaipur Police.
The police found out that Jyoti's father is dead and her mother is remarried; her stepfather is a taxi driver in Delhi. During the interrogation, her stepfather said they had not seen their daughter for eight months.
He also told the police that in the first week of August, Jyoti called him and asked for money. He transferred the money into the account of a male companion, Subhash, believed to be from Chandigarh.
The police now believe that Jyoti is not a lone operator. Verifying her antecedents, they found she had taken a room on rent in Jaipur on the August 1 with two other male companions whom she said were her brothers. They vanished along with her on the 18th.