About 26 days have passed since a cheating incident in which an elderly woman was duped of her gold jewellery by two youths, but the police here are still groping in the dark.
After the incident in Rourkela, the two culprits were noticed at Danipara area in Raigarh in Chhatisgarh where they also managed to chaet another woman in a similar fashion. later, while they were trying to make fool another woman at Patalgaon, some people suspected their activities and sensing troubles, the looters ran away from there.
Sources said the loot occurred at the residence of KD lath, a renowned chartered accountant, of Uditnagar area on August 20. lath’s wife Pushpa Devi, an elderly woman, and her granddaughter were available at house. Since it was a Sunday, the other family members had gone outside for some work. Two unknown persons knocked the gate of lath and when granddaughter of lath came, they asked her about her father. When she said father is at office, both the persons followed the child to the first floor where lath’s family reside. They said that they can polish old gold jewelleries and make them shine and when lath’s wife Pushpa refused that she did not want to clean her jewelleries and her husband was not at home, soon one of the thugs threw acid on tiles of the floor and cleaned it and showed how the floor shined with their material. Thereafter, both tried to persuade Pushpa to give them her gold jewelleries for cleaning and shining. Both were successful in taking out two gold bangles and necklace from Pushpa which she had worn for cleaning there and asked the little kid to bring a big size container with some water in which they will clean the gold jewelleries. When she gave them a big container, they showed Pushpa and her granddaughter that they were putting Pushpa ’s jewelleries inside the container for cleaning and dropped some liquid type material in it. They told Pushpa to keep the container on a gas stove and followed Pushpa and her granddaughter to kitchen to keep the container on a gas stove. They told Pushpa to open the container after about 20 minutes. Thereafter, they went away from the house politely. However, when Pushpa opened the container after sometime, there were no jewelleries in the container.
Pushpa at this time knew that she had been cheated and looted of her jewelleries. lath and his son Sudhir informed the matter to the Uditnagar police station. Uditnagar police led by IIC RC Dora reached the house and started an inquiry. later, a case was registered.
Sudhir had arranged the CCTV footage in which those two looters were spotted and gave it to the police in the form of a CD to nab the two cheats. Sudhir also met the Rourkela SP and gave him a CD Subsequently, Sudhir knew that the two miscreants tried to loot people in similar fashion in Raigarh and Pathalgaon area in Chhatisgarh and informed about it to the Rourkela police. But so far the police have not made much headway in the case.
“We have sent photographs of those two miscreants to different police stations. Our efforts are on to nab them,” said Rourkela SP Uma Shankar Das.