Gold finger: Jewellery shop cleaned out of gold worth Rs5m

KARACHI:

Shopkeepers in Shah Faisal Colony protested against the police on Tuesday after a jewellers shop in the area was robbed of at least Rs5 million worth of gold on Tuesday afternoon.

According to one version, dacoits on a motorcycle entered The New Hazara Jewellers in Shah Faisal Colony number one, held its four employees hostage and looted gold worth in excess of Rs5 million.

However, SHO Shah Faisal Colony Sarfaraz Gondal said that it was still not clear how the robbery was committed. “None of the protesting jewellers have come to the police station to record their statements and lodge a case against the unknown perpetrators,” he said, adding that they have received conflicting reports about how the robbery was committed.

SP Waqar Mulhen said the protesters were assured that everything would be done to crack the case as soon as possible. “We have some leads that indicate that the culprits are from the same area,” he said, adding that investigations were still at an initial stage. Gondal questioned why there were no eyewitnesses who could give a description of the robbers. The police is also facing issues since there were no private security guards or CCTV cameras outside the shop.

While protesters claimed that the amount stolen was in excess of Rs5 million and probably close to Rs10 million, Mulhen said the figure could be exaggerated. Meanwhile, the Sindh Sarafa (Jewellers) Association president Haroon Rashid railed against the police for being indifferent to the sufferings of the jewellers. “Initially it was the banks, but now the mafias involved are targeting jewellers especially because they know that gold prices have increased a lot over the past few months,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 4^th, 2012.