Ahmedabad: A wholesale trader in Ramol has alleged that his employee concealed cigarette cartons inside wholesale boxes of biscuits and sold them as “biscuit” deliveries to unknown buyers, causing a loss of nearly Rs 4.5 lakh.Ramol police registered a complaint based on a statement by Balakrishna Thakkar (59), who runs a wholesale shop on Vastral RTO Road. In his complaint filed on Wednesday, Thakkar alleged that his employee, Rakesh, a native of Sirohi in Rajasthan, had been working at the shop for nearly two months and carried out the alleged fraud before Jan 1.According to police, the accused allegedly hid cigarette parcels inside biscuit cartons and swapped the packaging. He would then hand over the cigarette parcels to an unidentified person posing as a customer, while presenting the consignments as routine biscuit sales. Thakkar stated that bills were regularly issued from the cash counter for biscuit sales without physically verifying the goods, which allowed the transactions to go unnoticed.The alleged manipulation came to light during an annual stock verification of cigarette inventory, when discrepancies were found between sales records, stocks and income. Upon scrutiny, the trader discovered that cigarette parcels worth approximately Rs 4.5 lakh were missing.Ramol police have registered a case and initiated further investigation to trace the accused and identify the buyers involved.
