Mumbai: Diamonds worth ₹78 lakh stolen from BKC firm; case registered

Mumbai: A private company has lodged a case against an employee, who is reported to have stolen 291.83 carat diamonds worth Rs 78 lakh. He was supposed to have handed over the gems to the company’s Surat unit for quality control tests. Instead of doing so, he is alleged to have kept them. The said diamonds were to be used for the Tanishq jewellery that is manufactured by the company.

According to the Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) police, Harikrishna Bhagwan Tiwari, 46, a manager in a private company, has complained to the police that Umesh Hariba Jadhav, 34, an employee, had cheated the company. Tiwari has said in his complaint that Umesh Jadhav and Hitesh Nirmal had been appointed to do synthetic screening, lab and outsourcing work in the company. Both employees had been working with the company for the last four years. Both of them reported to Ramakrishnan, the manager of the office.

Tiwari said that his BKC firm makes jewellery for many renowned jewellery companies. Diamonds and raw material which come to their BKC office, for use in the jewellery made for these companies, are first sent to the quality control department. After the colour, cut and quality of the diamonds are checked, they are sent for synthetic screening. 25 per cent of these diamonds undergo synthetic screening, of which 10 per cent is separated for testing. Umesh Jadhav and Hitesh Nirmal were entrusted with the work of quality assurance (QA) sourcing for these separated diamonds.

After this, the diamonds are sent by courier to the IIDGR company in Surat for testing. In order to courier the stones, Jadhav and Nirmal had to submit these to Madhukar Phadkil of the despatch section and Phadkil would give them an invoice.

When the diamonds came back to the BKC office after testing at its Surat lab, the duo would hand over the diamonds to the vendor and have them sign the invoice, a copy of which would be kept with the BKC office.

Diamonds didn't reach Surat office

In March 2020, the Government of India imposed a lockdown due to the pandemic, resulting in all offices being closed, resuming only when the lockdown rules were relaxed in June 2020. At this time, only 30 per cent of the employees were attending the office. In this case, it meant that Jadhav would come to the office one day while Nirmal attended the following day. Jadhav stopped coming to office from January 17, 2021. On January 20, 2021, Amish Patel, assistant manager of the quality control department, learnt that the diamonds sent by one of his vendors, which had been dispatched to Surat, had not yet arrived. It was only when Patel informed the company’s senior officials about this did the fact about the diamonds not having reached Surat come to light.

When the officials checked the portal and the challan, no entry for those diamonds could be found. When the company called Jadhav to get information about those diamonds, his mobile number was switched off; after that Jadhav’s emergency number was found and his wife was called, she informed the company that Jadhav had not come home since January 21 and she had not lodged a missing person complaint with the police.

After this, on checking, it was found that in all, diamonds worth Rs 78.33 lakh, belonging to different vendors were missing and no challan or entry had been made for them. At this point, the company manager, Tiwari, lodged a complaint at the BKC police station. A BKC police officer said that from June 2020 to January 2021, Jadhav had stolen a total of RS 78,33,156 worth of diamonds from the company. 

A BKC officer said that following Tiwari’s complaint, the BKC police have started investigation by registering an FIR under sections 408 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the IPC.