Police handover stolen gold worth Rs 94L to trustees

Lokmat News Network

Aurangabad

A gold statue of Shri Chintamani Parshwanath Bhagwan weighing 2.056 kgs was stolen from Shri 1008 Chintamani Parshwanath Atishay Kshetra temple at Kachner village, a few months back. The Aurangabad rural police arrested the thieves and recovered 1.706 kgs of gold amounting to Rs 93.84 lakh, two mobile phones and Rs 70,000 cash, all amounting to Rs 95 lakh from them. On Saturday, by the permission of the court, the gold and cash were handed over to the trustees of the temple in the presence of special inspector general of police (IGP) K M Mallikarjun Prasanna, SP Manish Kalwaniya, additional SP Sunil Lanjewar, sub-divisional police officer Jaidutta Bhavar, and other police officers. The trustees thanked the police administration for quick action in detecting the case and seizing the stolen gold.

The trustee of the temple Vinod Lohade on December 25, 2022, lodged a complaint with Chikalthana police that a gold idol of Bhagwan Parshwanath weighing 2.056 kgs was stolen from the temple.

SP Kalwaniya established teams including SDPO Jaidutta Bhavar, local crime branch PI Rameshwar Renge, Chikalthana police station PI Devidas Gaat, PSI Pradeep Thube, Vijay Jadhav, and others to investigate the case. The police solved the case just 30 hours after a case was registered. The police arrested the thieves Arpit Narendra Jain (Shivpuri, Guna, Madhya Pradesh) and Anil Bhavanidin Vishwakarma (Shahagadh, Sagar, MP). The accused after stealing the idol cut it into pieces and sold some parts to the goldsmith and made biscuits and coins by melting it. The police seized all these valuables and handed them over to the trustees.

Prasanna said that the trustees should take precautions so that such incident should not occur in the temple again. They should adopt all the security measures to protect the idol. The police have done their job by detecting and seizing the valuables, but people should take care that such incidents should not occur.

LCB PI Renge, Chikalthana PI Ravindra Khandkar, and other officers were present.

Accused should be punished severely

On behalf of the trustees, Sanjay Kasliwal and Sureshkumar Kasliwal thanked the police administration and felicitated the officers by giving shawls and coconuts. They demanded that the thieves should be punished severely.

Trustees Lalitkumar Patni, Bharatkumar Thole, Manikchand Badjate, Phulchand Jain, Vinodkumar Lohade, Hemant Bakliwal, Mahendra Thole, Adv Pramod Patni, Sachin Patni, Nilesh Kala, Kiran Mast, and others were present.