Staffer steals gold worth Rs 17L from jewellery shop, arrested

BENGALURU: A 49-year-old man working at a jewellery store stole from the shop to open his own jewellery showroom but ran out of luck soon. Police recovered booty worth `17 lakh from Krishnananda Seth who was working at B Ramarao and Sons since seven years.

According to police, Krishnananda was given complete responsibility of the shop as the owner Amit Prakash was taking care of his other business. He would take gold ornaments weighing 30-40g and sell it to pawn brokers on Avenue Road and replace them with ornaments of the same design with only about 3-4g of gold in it.  

As Amit trusted his Krishnananda, he only counted the number of gold ornaments and not their weight. He also did not check the money transactions too. Krishnananda would sell these 3-4g of gold. This had been going on since two years.

Recently, during an audit, Amit came to know about the huge losses he incurred and was shocked.
Sensing that he would be suspected, Krishnananda quit his job saying he was planning to open his own jewellery store in Thyagarajanagar for which he had paid an advance of `40,000. Amit grew suspicious about how Krishnananda had managed to raise money to open a jewellery store as he had lost money in gambling at the races. He then filed a complaint with Basavanagudi police.

During interrogation, Krishnananda confessed to the crime. Police sources said, “The money he got from selling the gold was invested in gambling as well as in opening a new store. Krishnananda still has `5 lakh debts which he had borrowed from various people for gambling.”