Aishwarya Rajinkanth's staff arrested; valuables recovered

CHENNAI: City Police on Tuesday arrested two staff of filmmaker Aishwarya Rajinikanth for stealing the latter's gold and diamond jewellery in installments.

Police recovered 100 sovereign gold jewellery, 30 grams of diamonds and four kilograms of silver articles from them.

The arrested persons were identified as A Eswari (46) of Mandaveli and K Venkatesan (44) of Tiruverkadu. Eswari was employed with Aishwarya for the past 18 years and she colluded with the driver, Venkatesan, and stole the jewellery, police investigations revealed.

Teynampet Police had registered a case three weeks ago based on Aishwarya' s complaint, in which she named three staff in her home as the suspects.

According to her complaint, the missing valuables included diamond sets, uncut diamonds in temple jewellery, antique gold pieces, Navaratnam sets, full antique uncut diamond with gold-set of two neck pieces with matching earrings, Aram necklace and bangles around 60 sovereigns.

The elder daughter of veteran Tamil actor, Rajinikanth, had learnt of the missing jewels last month when she checked her locker. She had last used the missing jewels at her younger sister, Soundarya's wedding in 2019, after which the locker had shifted to three different residences of Aishwarya.

"The keys to the locker were kept in my personal steel cupboard at St Mary's road apartment. This was known to my staff. They also used to frequent the apartment when I was away," the Vai Raja Vai director had stated in her complaint.

Investigations by Teynampet Police revealed that Eswari had bought a piece of land in Sholinganallur by applying bank loan few years ago. However, she was able to settle the loan amount in two years, which police investigations revealed was possible by pledging the stolen jewels.

The arrested persons were produced before a magistrate and remanded in custody.