Impersonating IT Officials, Six Loot 1,700g Gold From Hyderabad Jewellery Workshop

Hyderabad: Drawing inspiration from a Bollywood movie, six persons posing as Income Tax officers looted 1,700 gram of gold within five minutes from the workshop of Balaji Jewellers in Monda Market on Saturday afternoon.

The miscreants dressed in light-coloured full sleeves shirts with ties and black leather shoes holding files in their hands entered into the manufacturing unit located behind the jewellery shop at 11.30 am.

They displayed fake IDs to four workers at the workshops stating that they are from the I-T department and asked about the shop owner. After the employees said that he was out of station they asked them to display the gold jewellery. While the workers were displaying gold biscuits, the imposters demanded the sale and purchase bills and the bill books.

Two of the miscreants started examining the gold while the other two posed as if they were tallying the accounts. Then one of them told them that the bills and the stock do not tally and the entire gold was purchased with black money and stated that they will seize the gold and their shop.

The imposters then asked the workers to assemble in a room, collected their mobile phones, locked it from outside and fled the scene with gold, police sources disclosed.

They acted in such a manner that no one got suspicious and believed them to be genuine I-T officials, Sachin Agarwal, a gold merchant who interacted with the workers after the imposters fled, said.

One of the imposter asked them to give the contact details of the shop owner, dumped 17 gold biscuits weighing 1,700 gram in a leather bag and fled the scene.

They said that the shop will get an official notice from the head office through a registered post soon, walked by foot and disappeared into the narrow lanes.

Shopowner Revanna Babu was not in city when the incident took place. After knowing about the loot, Revanna rushed to the shop believing that the imposters were really from the I-T department.

The owner grew suspicious after a senior gold shop owner said that I-T officials never leave without giving an official notice with details of the seized property, also take a signature copy of the owner and also give an endorsed copy.

The accused were aged between 25 to 30 years and spoke in Hindi, Telugu and Marathi, police said.

The imposters were spotted in the CCTV footage running to the main road, boarding an autorickshaw and rushing towards Uppal, police said.

The owner lodged a complaint with the Market police. The entire city, Rachakonda and Cyberabad police have been alerted. Eleven special teams have been formed to trace the imposters.

Exit points and outskirts of the city have been barricaded, police personnel deployed on the roads and frisking of commuters connecting Uppal and suburbs conducted.

“We have formed special teams and the accused will be nabbed soon. They have no way to escape, we have alerted all the police stations in the tri-commissionartes and our IT cell is monitoring CCTV footages to identify the road and the vehicles they used. We will get them soon, DCP north zone Deepti Chandana, said.

Police claimed they have got the registration numbers of the vehicles used by the imposters while fleeing the crime scene.