Burglars break into grocery shop in Matunga

MUMBAI: In a

shocking incident

a house breaking gang broke into a jewellery shop and a well known grocery shop that sells all traditional Kerala based goods and decamped away with cash of around Rs 2.50 lakh in Matunga early Wednesday morning.


While the house breakers succeeded in breaking in from the backdoor of Annapurna stores, situated at Bhandarkar road in Matunga east, they failed to break into Jyoti Jeweller’s shop in the same building as the jeweller had put three layers of iron gates which prevented the theft. Shopkeeper has held the builder’s negligence led to the house breaking.

Annapurna which is a five decade old store situated opposite Matunga Central railway station has been selling Kerala traditional food products ranging from pooja articles to food products,

Kerala coconut

, achar papad and other Ayurvedic goods.

The Matunga police have registered an offence of house breaking against an unknown gang and are scanning the cctv footage of the area to nab the suspects.
According to the police, on Wednesday morning when the shop owner Chandran Nambiar arrived he was shocked to see the locks of the shutter broken.

"I along with my employees entered the shop to find everything ransacked and the safe broken. We were in a state of shock and are still calculating how much cash was kept in the safe. The cash was meant for salaries of my employees, tax, GST payments and payments to various clients," said Chandran.

Similarly Nambiar’s neighbouring shop

Jyoti Jewellers

was also found broken. "The gang which may be three or four broke into the two shops. While they succeeded in Annapurna, but failed to break the three security gates and may have fled away with whatever cash they collected from grocery shop," said

Vijaysingh Ghatge

, senior inspector of Matunga police.

Rajan Nambiar the shop owner of Annapurna stores have held the builder responsible for the theft. He said the builder had taken over the redevelopment of their building. "Even though 40 per cent of tenants are still staying in the building, the builder has demolished the building behind the shop and erected fences and at night time all drunkards and drug addicts assemble and consume liquor and drugs. The light are dim and no cctv cameras and we suspect they may be behind the house breaking," added Rajan.

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