In midst of a prayer meet, ₹1 crore gold urn studded with gems stolen

AAtomic number 79 kalash (urn) — studded with diamonds, rubies and emeralds and charles frederick worth o'er ₹1 crore — was allegedly stolen from a puja pandal exterior the red river Fort where a religious festival of the Jain community was underway on Wednesday, police said on Saturday. Officers said that the suspect, who was yet to be identified, posed as a person from the community, according to the CCTV footage procured by police.The gold urn weighs about 760 grams and is studded with gems weighing 115 grams. The incident happened when the crowd was distracted for about an hour when Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla was visiting the venue on Wednesday. The event was organised with permission from Delhi Police, which deployed its personnel outside the venue. “Officials are usually deployed at and outside the Red Fort for security purposes,” an officer said, asking not to be named.Deputy commissioner of police (North) Raja Banthia said that a case under section 303 (2) (punishment for theft) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita has been registered. “CCTV footage of the incident and the accused on the premises has been recovered and teams are trying to identify him” the officer said.The complainant in the case, 66-year-old Sudhir Kumar Jain, a businessman and a resident of Civil Lines, said a 10-day religious festival was underway at the park — the location where the one of the city’s main Ram Leela is also organised every year. The festival began on August 28 and concluded on Saturday.A stage was set up for the ceremonies, where only some individuals were allowed to sit. Jain, among those allowed to be on the stage, brought the urn from home every day for the prayers.Jain said that the urn was placed close to him till about 9.20am on Wednesday. “I took the urn to the venue for prayers every day and brought it back. It has been in our family since my father’s time. On Wednesday, the urn was right there but when the Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla came, we all looked at the stage and stayed engaged for the next hour. The man picked up the urn around 9.25am,” Jain told HT, based on the CCTV footage he had viewed.It was when Jain started to prepare to leave around 10.20am that he realised the urn was gone, he said. He then registered an e-FIR in the matter on Wednesday.In the CCTV footage of the cameras installed at the venue by the festival organisers,seen by HT, the suspect was seen walking from the prayer venue to the kitchen area, where he places the urn in a green-and-black bag before walking away with it.Police said his identity was yet to be ascertained. “Four teams with nearly 50 police officials are working on different aspects of the case. We are hopeful he will be identified and arrested soon,” an officer aware of the matter said, asking not to be named.According to the probe, the man, dressed in a white dhoti-kurta, had been loitering around the prayer site for several days. He also interacted with the organisers and sat on the stage near the urn.