INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Nizam's Museum in Hyderabad has been solved within a week of a Hollywood-style heist by two men who escaped to Mumbai and lived it up in a
luxury hotel before being tracked down.A four-kg gold tiffin box studded with diamonds, rubies and emeralds - arguably the star of their
rich haul - a gold cup studded with rubies and emeralds, a saucer, a spoon and a tray have all been found from the duo.The three-tier tiffin
box worth several crores may not have been used by the Nizam, but one of the thieves used it every day to have food, revealed the Hyderabad
police.In the dead of night on September 2, the gang of two entered the museum at Purani Haveli in the old quarters of Hyderabad through a
They removed an iron grill and crawled into the tiny space to access the treasures."They were just about to pick a precious Quran with
golden cover in the next enclosure when they heard the early morning fajar ka azaan (Muslim prayers)
We don't know if it was sentiment or they got scared, but they didn't pick up the holy book," Hyderabad police commissioner Anjani Kumar
told TheIndianSubcontinent.The market value of the robbed goods - just the gold - would have fetched them Rs 1 crore
But their antique value is many times more
"It could have been sold for 30-40 crore rupees in the Dubai market," the police chief said.After launching a massive hunt, the police first
hit a dead-end with hardly any footage of the thieves, who had turned away the CCTV cameras while in action
There are about 32 security cameras on the premises.The men had 18 exit routes to choose from
One camera captured two men getting on a bike and riding away
But it was almost impossible to see their faces, because of the angle and the fact that they were using a muffler, apparently as protection
from the morning cold.The pillion rider was seen talking on a mobile phone
To track that call, the police put 22 teams on the job
They went through data from some 300 towers."All that went waste as the accused had pretended to talk on phones to mislead us, whereas their
phones had no SIM," Mr Kumar said.The police next checked the profiles of breaking-and-entering artistes known to use similar modus
operandi, and also slim enough to fit into a ventilator.They caught a break when video surveillance in the Charminar area revealed that two
men on a bike had stopped after the radiator hit a stone.When an abandoned bike was found in the nearby Zaheerabad district, with a radiator
problem, the two bikes were compared and seemed to be the same.The thieves had fled to Mumbai, checked into a five-star hotel and lived a
cases."He even tried to create an alibi as though he was in jail for a previous offence during the time of the theft," said the police
chief.His accomplice is younger but he was the mastermind
The idea struck him when he visited the museum like a tourist a couple of months ago
The pair then recced the place five or six times before the robbery.
