NEW DELHI: As it began, they had Dev Anand-starrer Jewel Thief in mind, or so it seems if you could avoid the twists and turns the blockbuster of the late sixties had. Besides, the villain in this real-life crime drama came from within a jewellery shop located in Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar area.
“On the face of it, Gyan Prakash was ingenuous and calculated,” says Deputy Commissioner of Police (South East) Rajesh Deo. Prakash began his ‘show’ along with a female employee Sarita Singh Chauhan with a guile that was difficult to detect.
The Deputy Commissioner was to find out later how their sheer cleverness was exposed as half-a kg of gold valued more than Rs 1.5 crore and Rs 10 lakh cash were recovered from them. Prakash worked at Ramakrishna Jewellers for several years. Trust developed over the years took him to the supervisory roles at the outlet: He was responsible for preparing sales bills, stock and inventory data, among other things, police said. Sarita was a sales executive and had a six-year experience at the outlet.
One day, Prakash found a glitch in the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. The entire stock of the showroom was uploaded on ERP and sold through it. “The duo made payments for lighter-weight jewellery and in reality, took away the heavier pieces,” said DCP Deo.
“The two would identify two pieces of jewellery, one light weight (2-3 gm) and the other heavier (50-100 gm). Sarita would then prepare a rough sale document for the light weight item and give it to Prakash, who prepared the bill on the computer. “The store manager unraveled the mystery. He approached the police and the two was arrested,” said DCP Rajesh Deo.
Half kg gold, cash recovered
Sheer cleverness of Gyan Prakash, the jewellery shop employees and his colleague Sarita Singh Chauhan, was exposed as half-a kg of gold valued more than Rs 1.5 crore and Rs10 lakh cash were recovered from them