Two employees, including a woman, were arrested for stealing 2.5 kgsof gold worth Rs 1.5 crores and over Rs 10 lakh cash from a jewellery showroom in south Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar area, police said on Tuesday.
The accused, identified as Gyan Prakash Prashad, 37, a resident of Vijay Enclave near Dabri in Delhi, and Sarita Singh, 32, a resident of Noida, had been working with Ramakrishna Jewellers for the last 6 to 7 years, as a billing executive and a sales executive, respectively.
The official said that Prashad, while working in the showroom, had identified a glitch in the ERP software and using the same, both the accused stole around 2.5 kg of gold jewellery which was worth more than Rs 1.5 crore.
According to police, on July 2, Rohit Bhuttan, manager at Ramakrishna Jewellers in Lajpat Nagar-II, filed a complaint wherein he alleged misappropriation and theft of gold jewellery and falsification of accounts by manipulation of computerised sales against their employees Prashad and Singh.
During investigation, both the accused were apprehended and they were interrogated to establish the modus operandi and the extent of misappropriation.
“After sustained interrogation, they disclosed that they had been stealing the jewelry items from the showroom for the last several months and had kept the stolen jewellery items at their houses. On the instance of Prashad, gold jewellery weighing about 258 grams and cash of Rs 10,50,000 was recovered, and on the instance of Singh, gold jewellery weighing 1,968.40 grams and cash amount of Rs 10,000 were recovered,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police, Southeast, Rajesh Deo.
Prashad was responsible for preparation of sale bills, stock data, inventory data etc. “The entire stock of the showroom is uploaded on ERP and sold through the same. For stealing the jewellery items, the duo would identify two pieces of jewellery, one lightweight item (2-3 grams) and other heavyweight item (50-100 grams). Singh would then prepare a rough sale document for the lightweight item and give it to Prashad, who prepared the bill on the computer,” the DCP said.
As soon as the tag number of the lightweight jewellery item was entered into the computer, its weight and price were displayed, which turned out to be a meagre amount.
“In the next step, the tag number of the initial item was removed, and the tag number of the heavier jewellery was input. However, due to a glitch in the software, despite entering the tag number of the heavier jewellery, the weight appearing on the bill was that of the lighter jewellery. Exploiting this flaw, the pair made payment for the lighter weight jewellery but actually took possession of the heavier jewellery,” the DCP said.
“While making the payment, they asserted that the item had been purchased by a customer and later surreptitiously removed the heavier jewellery from the showroom. By employing this technique, they managed to avoid arousing suspicion for several months because the sales and inventory records matched,” he added.
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