Sleight of hand during cab ride: How two ‘customers’ stole diamonds under staffer’s nose in Delhi

Saurabh returned to the store; he and the manager checked the diamonds again — they were indeed artificial. They called police.

The first clue in the case appeared when police asked Saurabh to recount the 19-km ride from the shop to the lab. Police found that the two buyers — Sagar, a jewel trader from Gurgaon, and Chandrashekhar from Delhi — were, in fact, “jewel thieves”.

The duo hatched the plan by visiting Solitairekart in the first week of May. They spoke to employees and checked gemstones. They returned 3-4 days ago and purchased a few diamond stones worth around Rs 1 lakh. “They wanted to buy more expensive diamonds and had shown interest in these three pieces of 15.05 carats which cost around Rs 10 lakh,’’ employees at Solitairekart told police. “They called the owner and told him they would visit on Thursday (June 6).”

On June 6, police said, Sagar and Chandrashekhar arrived at the store at 1.15 pm. They insisted they needed to check the genuineness of the diamonds before making a payment. Police found they wanted Solitairekart to send the diamonds to the Karol Bagh lab which exclusively deals in quality checks of gemstones.

The owner, investigators said, didn’t think it unusual. Sagar was a jewel trader and such a request wasn’t unexpected.

The store deputed Saurabh to get the three stones checked at the lab. Sagar and Chandrashekhar wished to accompany Saurabh; they had a taxi waiting outside.

Inside the car, police said Sagar asked Saurabh to show him the stones. “Hidden in Sagar’s pocket were similar-looking artificial diamonds. Within seconds, he replaced the real stones with the artificial ones and handed the plastic bag back to Saurabh,” police claimed.

They kept talking for the next 45 minutes till they got to the lab.

How did the police crack the case?

The buyers were not the first suspects. But when Saurabh told police of how Sagar asked to see the diamonds in the car, police turned their eyes on the buyers.

DCP (South) Ankit Chauhan, who monitored the case, had set up a team to probe the “missing” stones. Police tried to contact Sagar and Chandrashekhar to join the probe, but the phone numbers they used to contact Solitairekart were switched off.

The team, led by Inspector Nagender Singh and supervised by ACP (Hauz Khas), started pursuing the duo. Police scanned CCTV footage at the mall as well as the lab. The journey of the taxi, which had been hired for the entire day in Gurgaon, was established. It was also established that after leaving the lab, Chandrashekhar and Sagar were dropped at two locations in Delhi and Gurgaon respectively.

Police said the last calls showed Sagar was in Gurgaon. Police finally picked him up from Gurgaon on June 9. Chandrashekhar was hiding in Haridwar; he was arrested from there.

During questioning, police said the duo claimed they had handed over the diamonds to a friend, Madhusudan Aggarwal in Delhi, for safe-keeping. Their plan was to find a good buyer, sell the stones, and divide the money,” a police officer said.

Aggarwal, 54, was subsequently arrested from his home in Model Town. The three genuine diamond stones were recovered from his possession.

Police are now checking if this group used this modus operandi to cheat gemstone shops earlier too.

During questioning, police said, they found that Sagar was the mastermind; he was in a financial mess after his gemstone trading business collapsed a few years ago, they said.