Diamonds of Rs 10 lakh replaced by fakes, south Mumbai resident held

MUMBAI: A 40-year-old man who had called a diamond merchant to his hotel room at Zaveri Bazaar and, under the pretext of buying diamonds worth Rs 10 lakh, allegedly changed the diamonds with duplicates and fled has been arrested.
The LT Marg police on Friday arrested Dhaval Vohera, a resident of VP Road, for cheating and criminal intimidation. A local court sent him to police custody.
The complainant, Giriraj Gupta, who works for a diamond firm in Gurgaon, was in need of money and decided to sell off a few diamonds of 51.60 karat worth Rs 10 lakh. Gupta’s brother met Vohera at the hotel on November 18 last year to show him the diamonds.
Vohera, after checking the precious stones, agreed to pay him Rs 9 lakh.
“Vohera then got into a phone conversation with some diamond merchant and also asked the complainant’s brother to speak to him. While the brother was speaking on phone, Voherachanged the original diamonds, replacing them with duplicate diamonds in the packet. Vohera then told the man in the hotel room that there was some problem in arranging cash and asked for five days’ time.” said a police officer.
On November 26, when the complainant’s brother called another diamond merchant to sell these diamonds, he realised that the diamonds in his pouch were duplicate. He then recalled that while he was speaking on phone, Vohera had replaced the originals.