In a sensational broad daylight loot, five masked men stormed a jewellery store at Chowk Clock Tower in Sultanpur and looted gold jewellery worth Rs 2 crore and Ts 5 lakh in cash at gunpoint on Wednesday.
The robbers swiftly filled two bags with jewellery before escaping the scene.
CCTV footage of the incident has surfaced, capturing the entire heist as the miscreants executed the brazen act.
Local authorities, led by Superintendent of Police Somen Burma have reviewed the footage and assured the public that efforts are underway to apprehend the culprits.
IG Ayodhya Range, Praveen Kumar, also visited the spot and claimed that besides the Crime Branch, Special Operation Group, five more teams have also been formed to track down the criminals involved in the incident and arrest them.
He said the police had got 10 vital clues and hoped to arrest the culprits and recover the entire looted jewellery.
According to reports, a jewellery market, Sonar Mandi, is situated in Majorganj area, barely 100 metres away from Kotwali, from where local jewelers purchase ornaments. Bharat Soni also owns Bharatji Jewellers in the market.
At about 10 am on Wednesday, Soni reached the shop along with his son and opened it. Two customers later reached the shop and Bharat’s son started showing them jewellery.
The CCTV footage showed that around noon, one youth with his face covered entered the shop and immediately took Bharat Soni at gun-point. Later one more miscreant entered the shop with a black bag followed by three more and they took all others in the shop at gun-point and warned them, saying they would kill anyone who raised an alarm.
While two miscreants had covered their faces with cloth, the other three were wearing helmets. While two remained with pistols in their hands, the other three started to stash the ornaments and cash kept in the shop in the bag. The speed at which they looted the shop indicated that they were aware of all the lockers of the shop.
Within just 5 to 7 minutes they looted raw gold and jewellery along with Rs 5 lakh in cash and escaped from the spot. They were seen fleeing on two motorcycles in the CCTV footage installed outside the shop and in other adjoining showrooms in the market. They probably fled towards Pratapgarh.
The news of the loot spread like a wildfire and within no time, all jewellery traders reached Bharat Soni’s shop and demanded arrest of the miscreants.
Soon after learning about the loot, senior officers sealed the city boundaries and Circle Officer (City) Shivam Mishra and Station House Officer (City Kotwali) AK Dwivedi reached the spot followed by SP Sultanpur, Somen Verma and ASP Arun Chandra. They also summoned sniffer dogs to get some clues but failed. The forensic team also visited the spot.
The cops collected the names of all the present and past staff of the shop, including those working in adjacent shops, and are examining whether they could have provided the inputs leading to loot.
Presidents of the Sultanpur Jewellers’ Association, Devi Prasad Soni, also reached the spot and raised the issue of safety of the members of the community and the manner in which the miscreants executed the crime in the heart of the city that too during the busy hours. He claimed that in September 2023, a similar loot took place in Baba Bhushan Jewellers owned by Abhinav Seth which was also recorded in CCTV, but the police failed to work it out.
