The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Police clueless in jewellery theft case

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, May 26, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Police clueless in jewellery theft case

By Marri Ramu

HYDERABAD, MAY 25. ``No clues.'' That's the conclusion the sleuths of the Hyderabad Detective Department (DD) appear to have arrived at after a three-year-long investigation into the theft of Rs. 10 lakhs worth jewellery from an elderly woman in the cellar of the State Bank of Hyderabad's Gunfoundry main building.

It was 11.45 a.m. on March 27, 2001. A housewife, Shantha Kamalakar, was climbing up the staircase in the SBH's cellar after withdrawing jewellery from the locker.

Suddenly, an unidentified person with long hair turned up on the flight of stairs and pushed her down. He picked up the jewellery bag steps and ran away even as Ms. Shantha rolled down the staircase.

Ms. Shantha's inability to identify or even explain the offender's facial features hampered the investigation, police said. There was no other important lead to probe further, they maintained. "But I fail to understand how can the police expect an aged woman, who was walking up a dimly lit staircase and suffered a contusion on her head after being shoved to vividly remember the assailant's face," observed Ms. Shantha's son, Mrinal Chandra Kammili.

Mr. Chandra wondered how the offender managed to gain entry inside the highly guarded premises where lockers were located.

"During our inquiry, we found that only one armed security guard was deployed, that too at the bank's main entrance. There was nobody to watch as to who was going in and coming out of the cellar," DD officials said. Initially, the Abids police took up the investigation. Later, the case was handed over to the DD East Zone team. However, since the Abids police station was included in the newly created Central Zone, the case was assigned to the DD Central team, which is continuing the probe now, just two months ago. There were more than 10 counters in the bank's main hall. A path between two counters leads to the cellar. As no employee of the bank was stationed to oversee customers going in and coming out of the cellar, chances of getting any clues were almost sealed. The guard at the main entrance said he had not seen anybody hurrying out when the offence was reported.

Generally, the police get portraits of the accused prepared to probe such cases. With nobody to give even bare details of the suspect's features, this could not be done. Incidentally, no offences with similar modus operandi were reported, leaving the police at sixes and sevens. No fingerprints of the intruder were found at the spot either.

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