Rajkot: A peon at Indian Bank’s Ranjitsagar Road branch in Jamnagar was booked alongside an accomplice for allegedly stealing mortgaged gold ornaments worth Rs 39.48 lakh from the bank vault and swapping them with counterfeit jewelry.The theft came to light after the City A Division police detained a man attempting to sell suspicious gold ornaments, alerting the bank manager on Sept 3.According to the FIR lodged by branch manager Hemraj Gajra (40), the incident occurred during operational hours on Aug 27. Hasmukh Paria, a peon-cum-clerk residing at Pranami Township in Jamnagar, allegedly accessed the vault keys kept inside a drawer in the branch manager’s cabin. Paria opened the safe and removed 342.1gm of gold ornaments deposited by four borrowers as collateral against loans. To evade immediate detection, he placed fake gold duplicates back into the packets inside the safe.The stolen ornaments were subsequently handed over to his associate, Vijay Vaghora, who attempted to liquidate the assets.The fraud surfaced when police personnel visited the branch with written information regarding Vaghora’s detention. Following the tip-off, bank branch authorities conducted an immediate physical verification of the gold packets with the branch’s certified jewelry appraiser. The inspection confirmed that original gold belonging to four accounts had been substituted with fakesThe City “A” Division Police registered an offence against Paria and Vaghora under Sections 306 and 54 of the BNS.
