Mumbai diamond heist: 4 suspects held in Dubai

The Mumbai Police today claimed to have solved yesterday's sensational diamond heist in the city with the arrest in Dubai of four persons -- three Mexicans, including a woman, and a Venezuelan.

The four people, who had reached Dubai by an overnight Emirates flight from here, were detained by the police there and the Mumbai Police had initiated the process of getting them here for further investigations.

Diamonds valued at about $ 1.4 million (approximately Rs 6.6 crore) were reported missing from the stall set up by the Hong Kong-based Dalumin Group at the India International Jewellery Show (IIJS) in Goregaon here yesterday.

Joint Police Commissioner (Crime) Himanshu Roy told reporters that the police had been able to narrow the hunt for the culprits responsible for the heist to the four foreigners on the basis of closed circuit television (CCTV) footage obtained from the organisers of the event.

According to him, the four persons had come to the stall around 3.30 pm yesterday, pretending to be trade visitors. While the three men kept the salesman at the stall, an Israeli, engaged in conversation, the woman managed to move the diamonds to her bag.

Initially, the salesman thought the diamonds had been misplaced, but when he failed to find them after a thorough search, he informed the authorities and filed a report with the Goregaon police.

With the help of the video footage, the police were ultimately able to zero in on the four foreigners after going through the records of some 1500 visitors to the show, but by the time the authorities at the airport were alerted, the group had already flown out to Dubai.

The Mumbai Police then got in touch, through the Interpol, with their Dubai counterparts, who detained the four suspects. Some reports suggested that the Dubai Police had also recovered the diamonds from them. According to the reports, the suspects had put the 887 carats diamonds in small plastic bags and swallowed them to evade detection at the Mumbai airport, but were made to purge them at Dubai.

NNN