The police have successfully cracked the Agripada jewellery stickup case, arresting two accused involved in the audacious robbery of gold ornaments worth Rs1.9 crore on Sunday afternoon. Vinod Pal (29) was caught by the Crime Branch, while his accomplice, Santosh Bulakia (26), was nabbed by Agripada police. Authorities have recovered part of the stolen loot and are working to retrieve the rest.
The incident took place at Rishabh Jewellers near Saat Rasta, where the duo, armed with a gun, forcibly tied up jeweller Bhavarlal Jain and his employees before assaulting them. They made off with 2,458 grams of gold and silver ornaments valued at Rs1.9 crore. In a bizarre twist, the robbers mistakenly stole the shop’s Wi-Fi router thinking it was a DVR, unaware that CCTV footage had already captured the entire crime.
“Our investigations revealed that the robbers conducted a recce an hour before the heist, posing as customers interested in buying a gold ring,” an officer said. After the robbery, the accused split the loot and fled separately.
A special task force formed by Agripada police and the Crime Branch examined over 150 CCTV cameras and collaborated with police in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh to track the suspects. Vinod Pal proved especially elusive, using multiple modes of transport to evade capture. He traveled from Mumbai to Thane by taxi, switched to a rickshaw to Bhiwandi, took a shared taxi to Nashik, used a private vehicle to Bhusawal, and finally boarded a train to Bhopal. Police found him hiding under a pile of fodder in a nearby village. Santosh Bulakia was arrested in a simultaneous operation by Agripada police.
