4 South Americans held: Gold heist booty recovered
It was a near-perfect job, but the CCTV footage gave them away
The Central Crime Branch (CCB) sleuths of the City police on Tuesday arrested four foreign nationals from Goa and recovered intact eight kilograms of gold and one kg silver, in all valued at around Rs 1.25 crore, stolen from a Residency Road hotel room on March 22.
The complainants, executives of a gold jewellery firm from Jaipur were so delighted that they gave a reward of Rs five lakh to the investigating team.
The arrested persons are Pedro Alejandro Maira Rodriguez (30) from Venezuela, Maira Alejandra Aranago Giraldo (22) of Barrio Villa, Pereira, Columbia, Elensilson Amilcar Pocasangre Ruano (34) of Los Rosales, San Salvador, and Luis Alberto Giraldo Lopez (25) from Bogota, Columbia.
Flocking together
The gang members met in Malaysia a few months ago. Pedro, himself a designer has wide knowledge of jewellery designs. He and Maira have been together for the past few months. Elenilson and Luis also joined Pedro and decided to visit India to make some fast bucks.
They entered India through Katmandu and visited jewellery exhibitions in Kolkata, Mumbai and finally Bangalore. They eyed the Jaipur firm for its Italian designs, as it is easy to push them in the European market.
How they did it
On March 17, the four landed in Bangalore and stayed in a hotel in the heart of the City. The gang rented a red Swift. They also bought three sim cards through fictitious names and moved around in the City for four days and decided to execute the plan on the last day of the exhibition.
Pedro, claiming to be a businessman, visited the exhibition and zeroed in on the stall of the Jaipur firm which specialised in Tendenza Italian design jewellery. The gang followed the jewellery firm executives to the Pride Hotel. Pedro sat on the sofa in the lobby and alerted Elenilson and Luis who were in the car.
The moment the executives came down for dinner, all the three walked in with the same coloured suit case, forced the room door open and walked away with the booty. It took them just eight minutes accomplish it.
The same night, the gang left for Goa and were staying in a hotel while the couple had hired a service apartment. The gang had planned to send the stolen jewellery to Columbia and Peru through courier.
They had bought some stuffed toys and were about to refill stolen jewellry by wrapping them with carbon paper to hoodwink customs.
They had visas till June 12 but they wanted to get back to their base, Malaysia, through Kolkata. Meanwhile, while attributing their success to CCTV footage (both at jewellery exhibition and at the hotel), the CCB sleuths are now walking ten feet tall.
