Thieves eat from Nizam’s tiffin box; caught in 5-star hotel

| | Hyderabad
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Thieves eat from Nizam’s tiffin box; caught in 5-star hotel

Wednesday, 12 September 2018 | Omer Farooq | Hyderabad

Thieves eat from Nizam’s tiffin box; caught in 5-star hotel

Hyderabad city police cracked the case of theft of priceless antique from Nizam’s Museum with the arrest of two burglars and recovered the stolen gold tiffin box and tea cup along with spoon from them.

Hyderabad city Police Commissioner Anjani Kumar said the two burglars Mohammed Ghouse Pasha, alias Khooni Ghouse and Mohammed Mubeen were arrested in a joint operation by the South Zone Police and Commissioner’s task force.

The duo had entered the Museum at Purani Haveli palace in the old city in the wee hours of September 3 and stole the two artifacts belonging to the last Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan valued at Rs 50 crore in the international market. After stealing the tiffin box one of them used it for eating food during last one week when they stayed at a five star hotel in Mumbai, Anajni Kumar said.

“After committing the theft they had escaped to Mumbai and stayed in a five star hotel. They unsuccessfully tried to sell the goods but could not succeed. Our teams traced them to Mumbai and arrested them”, the Commissioner said.

 The police produced the two alleged offenders before the media.

 The tiffin box made of gold and studded with diamonds and gems along with the tea cup and spoons were also shown to the media at the crowded press conference.

 “The two had under taken reconnaissance of the museum for forty days and visited the place many times before committing the theft in a well planned manner”, Anjani Kumar said.

 While Ghouse Pasha was a habitual offender and was involved in 25 cases of theft Mubeen worked in Gulf for some time and also underwent imprisonment in connection with an offence, he added.

 Police Commissioner also revealed that the duo had also tried to take away an antique Quran from the museum. But as they heard the calls for the morning prayers (Fajar Namaz) from nearby mosque they dropped the idea and came out to flee the place.

 After the sensational theft came to light the Commissioner had formed 20 special teams to nab the culprits. In the absence of sufficient clues, the teams worked painstakingly and succeeded in cracking the case, he said pointing out that the police had only 15 second blurry footage of CCTV camera of a mosque outside the museum.

 In the footage the two youth were seen coming out of the museum lane and boarding a motor cycle. Based on the images the detectives worked and traced the two offenders, the Commissioner added.

 The burglars had entered the museum from the adjacent building and broke into the first floor gallery through ventilator. They used a rope to scale down from ventilator and after breaking the show case they took away only two most expensive items while leaving other items untouched. They had also turned away the CCTV camera from the show case to avoid detection. Three private security guards on duty during the night remained oblivious to the crime as the doors were shut from outside. 

 Commissioner said that the offenders resorted to many tricks to mislead the people. “In the CCTV footage we could see one of them was acting as if he was talking on mobile phone when he was in fact holding a battery torch close to his hears. This forced the police to go through the record of thousands of calls made from the area wasting precious time”, the Commissioner said.

 The two artifacts were among the 450 odd gifts presented to the Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan by his subjects in 1937 on the occasion of the silver jubilee celebrations of sitting on the throne of Hyderabad. The priceless collection was on display at the Nizam's Museum of HEH Nizam Silver Jubilee Pavilion Trust since year 2000.

 The fact that the thieves celebrated their success by enjoying meals in the gold tiffin has become a rage on the social media with many creating memes and commenting. “Whether the King and his family enjoyed the food in the gold tiffin box or not, thieves has definitely enjoyed it”, one of them said.

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