Golden crown worth Rs 2 lakh stolen from temple

Pune: A well-dressed man believed to be in his thirties allegedly stole a golden crown worth Rs 2 lakh from an idol in the Godiji Parshwanath Temple in Guruwar Peth around 8 pm on Wednesday.

The temple officials discovered the missing jewellery around half-an-hour later.

The theft was captured on closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras installed at various places on the temple premises.

A case of theft was filed at the Khadak police station. The police said they were scrutinising the video footage.

Circumambulations
Clad in formal clothes, the suspect entered the temple posing as a devotee and pretended to worship for the first few minutes.

He then performed circumambulations of the small temple at least four times.

While the suspect was behind the temple and could not be  captured on the CCTV camera, he is believed  to have removed a long, thin metal rod that was tucked in his trousers.

The rod trick
As he again comes into view, the man is seen putting the rod in through the window to lift the crown from its resting place, quickly pocketing it and leaving.

Dhirubhai Shah (40), one of the trustees of the temple, said the priest discovered the theft when he was heading towards the temple for the daily aarti around 8.30 pm.

"He immediately called the temple trustees, who started looking around and then decided to check the CCTV footage. It took us another 45 minutes to identify the thief after which we called the Khadak police," he said.

Spread over an area of 10,000 square feet, Godiji Parshwanath Temple premises also house several smaller temples. DCP Dnyaneshwar Phadtare said that they had formed a team and were confident of nabbing the suspect soon.

"It seems that he is a regular devotee at the temple," he said.