Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Gulp! Diamond dash ends in Dubai airport

Mumbai, Aug. 24: Four Latin American jewel thieves who stole diamonds worth over Rs 6 crore from an expo yesterday and swallowed the stones were caught in Dubai today in a co-ordinated operation by police here and in the emirate.

The four — three men and a woman — entered the India International Jewellery Show in Goregaon posing as jewellery traders. Police sources said that around 4.30pm, while the three men chatted with an employee of Dalumi group at the Israeli diamond manufacturer’s outlet, their 24-year-old Mexican companion, Guerrero Lugo Elvia Grissel, picked up a box containing 75 packets of 887.24 carat diamonds “and hid it in her handbag”. The stones were worth Rs 6.6 crore.

The theft was detected by Dalumi about an hour after Grissel, her Mexican accomplices — Campos Molan Elias, 39, and Gonzalez Madlonado Mauricio, 24 — and Venezuelan Gutierez Orlando had left, said joint commissioner (crime) Himanshu Roy.

The expo organisers informed Goregaon police station in the western suburbs of Mumbai. The organiser, the Gems and Jewellery Export Promotion Council, provided the police with CCTV footage that showed the woman had stolen the diamonds.

The police alerted the immigration authorities at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport but by then the group had boarded the Mumbai-Dubai-Hamburg Emirates flight around 10pm and taken off. The crime branch then called the Interpol wing of the CBI and the Union home ministry, which contacted authorities in Dubai.

Dubai police searched the Emirates flight around 2am IST, deplaned the four and detained them. They then administered medicine to the group to take out the diamond packets they had swallowed.

Roy said: “It appears that they had done a recce. They chose the last day of the show to commit the crime. We are investigating if they got any local help.” Mumbai police will send a team armed with the non-bailable warrant to bring the four back to the city.

Most likely, the four made on-the-spot registrations to enter the fair. For foreign nationals, the organisers ask for photographs and copies of their passport. As these details were available, the police could match the CCTV footage and identify the suspects.


The above method adopted by the crooks is nothing new.
My neighbour in Burrabazar, Kolkata had lost her diamond nose pin .
She suspected her servant may have taken it.
Under threats and questioning he admitted having taken it and had swallowed it.
My neighbour did not have medicines to help her but she was very resourceful.
She made the servant eat boiled raw bananas and kept him under observation.
The next morning when he wanted to go to the toilet, she made him sit in the room in front of her. She then made him search for the ring.
Lo and behold!
The nose pin was there.
When you think of it, it is so simple.
We have a 30 ft tube from the mouth to the rectum through which all food pass.
If the stomach chemicals do not have any reaction on the ingested food, it passes out, as it was when ingested, provided it does not get stuck on the walls of the pipe.
The boiled raw banana just provided lubrication so that the nose pin did not get stuck on the walls of the alimentary canal.

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