Mumbai cops go through nullah muck for stolen jewellery

MUMBAI: A Malad police team left no stone unturned when it came to doing their job, even if they had to risk their lives. The team entered a 30-feet deep flowing nullah on the Oshiwara-Goregaon stretch and recovered 214 grams of gold and silver ornaments worth Rs9 lakh. The recovered ornaments, reportedly 100 years old, were part of the 350gram jewellery the thief has dumped in the nullah after believing a jeweller who had informed him that it was imitation jewellery.
Malad police arrested the thief Abdul Shaikh (42) from Palghar and the jeweller Manoj Jain (49) from Goregaon, who had purchased some part of the stolen booty from him after he burgled a Malad-based businessman’s locked flat the night between February 6 and 7.
The burglary came to light on February 7 when the businessman’s domestic help came for work and noticed a bend in the balcony window grille and a cupboard safe that was broken to steal the valuables worth Rs14.83 lakh. After learning about the burglary from the domestic help, the businessman returned with his family from Amravati and filed a case with the Malad police. “With the help of technical assistance and CCTV grabs of the locality, Shaikh was identified and nabbed from Ajmer in Rajasthan,” said a police officer.
On learning that Shaikh was going to leave Ajmer, DCP (Zone XI) Vishal Thakur supervised the team, comprising senior inspector Dhananjay Ligade, inspector Sharad Jadhav, assistant inspector Samir Mujjawar, which managed to nab Shaikh after the team took a flight to Rajasthan and arrested him before he could escape. “Shaikh used to enter locked flats by scaling the higher floors like spiderman by taking support of the pipes fixed on the wall,” said DCP Thakur.
“With Shaikh’s arrest, we have managed to detect four cases of theft,” said senior inspector Ligade.