Thane: Robbery bid at jewellery store foiled by owner

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A robbery attempt was foiled on Monday after a Thane-based jewellery shop owner visited the shop at odd hours for some work and caught one of the accused red-handed.

The incident took place at the outlet located in the Kopri area when the accused were engaged in carpentry work in an adjacent shop. The accused had rented the shop adjacent to the jewellery outlet on the pretext of setting up a farsan outlet. On Monday around 1.30 pm, Dilip Kataria, owner of Bhawani Jewellers, visited the shop for some work. When he opened the shutter of the shop, he was shocked to find a man inside the shop. He started shouting, nabbed the man and called the Thane Police Control room. Kopri cops rushed to the spot.

"I just got a thought of going and checking my shop, around 2.10 pm, I went to the shop and as soon as I opened the shutter I saw a man inside," said Dilip Kataria.

"He tried to hide but I spotted him and immediately called my neighbouring shop owners and called the cops as well," he added.

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"During interrogation, we asked the man how he got inside the shop. He showed us a wall inside the jewellery shop which had a hole in it," said an official from Kopri Police station.

"The adjacent shop was rented by a few unknown persons for setting up wholesale farsan shop," he added.

The thieves had made a foolproof plan to get inside the shop with minimum risk. On Monday noon as most of the jewellery shops in Thane are shut, the burglars planned to steal as much as gold jewellery possible and run away on the same night.

The work for the farsan shop had begun as workers kept working in the shop posing to make furniture for the new shop but in reality, they were drilling a hole in the wall. The thieves managed to get the gold and cash from the vault but incidentally, owner Kataria arrived and one of the thief got caught.

According to cops, four to five persons were involved in the plan. An offence has been registered in Kopri Police station against one known and four to five unknown persons.