Businesswoman’s kin held for jewellery theft

Salem City police commissioner Sanjay Kumar said that Baskar’s brother-in-law Gowtham (20) of Vaiyappamalai in Namakkal District stayed at Baskar’s place when the families had gone to Tirupati during the weekend. It is learnt that he had the keys for the almirah in which the valuables were kept. Also the different floors of the houses were connected from inside, making it easy for Gowtham to enter the ground floor and steal the jewellery.

Police found that the glass window panes of the toilet behind the house were removed from inside. “This made us to suspect the role of an insider in the crime,” Deputy Commissioner of Police R Ramakrishnan said. Gowtham was unavailable and a search was launched for him.

He was nabbed by the police around 2 am on Wednesday. During inquiry, he confessed that he had stolen the jewellery and safely kept it in his house at Vaiyappamalai. On weighing the stolen jewellery on Wednesday morning, police found that there were 780 sovereigns against 720 sovereigns as mentioned in the police complaint lodged by the victim.

The jewellery worth more than Rs 1.8 crore and Rs 2 lakh in cash that were stolen from the house were also recovered. Gowtham was booked under section 380 (theft) of the Indian Penal Code, arrested and lodged in jail in the late hours of Wednesday.