Security guards loot city jewellery shop
Take away Tk 45 lakh in gold
Staff Correspondent
Private security guards tasked with checking theft and robbery have themselves allegedly looted gold ornaments worth around Tk 45 lakh and Tk 21,231 in cash breaking open a jewellery shop at Eastern Plus market at Shantinagar in the capital. Of the nine on-duty guards of private security company RAPID, three are missing since Saturday night with 274.4 tola gold they burgled from Bikrampur Jewellers on the first floor of the market. The missing three are Ali Hossain, Alamgir and Shah Alam. Police picked up six other security guards who said that the three provided them Coca Cola mixed with sedatives at around 11:30pm on Saturday and as they became unconscious after having the soft drink their three colleagues stole the gold ornaments. They also took away Tk 21,231 breaking the cash drawer, Manager of Bikrampur Jewellers Mosharraf Hossain said. Police detained six security guards and the managing director of RAPID for interrogation, but could not recover any valuables as of 7:00pm yesterday. Mosharraf Hossain said they closed the shop at 9:05pm on Friday and did not come to the shop on Saturday, as the market remains closed on that day. "We came to the shop at 10:00am today and found the lower part of a shutter and a grille broken," Mosharraf yesterday said, adding that the uniform of a security guard was found inside the shop. On information, police rushed to the spot, and sealed the shop where broken pieces of ornaments lay scattered. Police seized pieces of iron rod, screwdriver and other equipment used to break the shutter and grille. The criminals might have chosen Bikrampur Jewellers as it was full of gold ornaments, a staff of a nearby jewellery said, adding that there are around a dozen jewellery shops on the first floor of the market. Officer-in-Charge of Paltan Police Station said he told Jhalakathi police to arrest the three missing guards who hail from the district. On August 28 last year, burglars took away about 4,000 tola gold ornaments and other valuables worth about Tk 5.15 crore, breaking through the ceiling of Venus Jewellers situated on the third floor of 15-storeyed Navana Shopping Complex in Gulshan-1. In another big heist on February 4, 2004, robbers took away some 4,000 tola gold ornaments and Tk 3 lakh in cash from two jewellery shops at the upmarket Karnaphuli Garden City in Shantinagar. In both the incidents, police could hardly recover any looted gold ornaments.
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