Bengaluru: For days, it seemed as though Tumakuru had bumped into its own version of a Dhoom-style heist: jewellery disappearing from a showroom with no signs of a break-in, no suspicious employees or customers and no alarms going off. But when CCTV footage was finally reviewed, the elusive ‘mastermind’ was caught red-handed — a rodent.Around 70 grams of diamond-studded gold jewellery worth nearly Rs 10 lakh mysteriously disappeared overnight from Vishwas Jewellers on B H Road on April 12. When employees opened the showroom, they found two gold chains and 10 diamond rings missing.Yet, the shutters and doors were all intact, with no signs of forced entry.Suspecting theft, the staff first scrutinised CCTV footage recorded during business hours the previous day, but found nothing amiss. They also noticed that the paper tags attached to some jewellery items had gone missing, too — an odd clue that prompted them to examine the overnight footage.The cameras then revealed the unlikely culprit: a rat dragging away the jewellery, one piece at a time, between 4.30 am and 5 am.Following its trail, the staff located a burrow inside a narrow gap left in the showroom furniture. After cutting open part of the unit, they recovered all the missing ornaments, along with a litter of rat pups. Some of the paper tags, though, could not be traced.The gaps in the furniture have since been sealed to prevent a repeat, though the ‘master thief’ remains at large.The incident came to light only recently after showroom owner Vishwas shared the CCTV footage on his Instagram account. He believes the rodent was after the paper tags tied to the jewellery, pulling the ornaments along with them.“I used to order food almost daily and dump the leftovers into the showroom dustbin. But for a couple of days before April 11, I hadn’t ordered. I suspect the rat, finding the dustbin empty, went looking for something to chew on and ended up targeting the jewellery tags,” Vishwas told TOI.“Initially, we suspected that some customer might have stolen the jewellery. But we wondered how someone could steal an entire tray of rings and two chains without the staff noticing anything at all. So, we decided to check the CCTV footage before approaching the police,” he added.
