Looted Gem: Looted gem hidden in switchboard, Kolkata judge detects ‘Feluda’ twist | India News

KOLKATA: A protracted legal battle over a 32-carat Golconda diamond, which ended in a city court last week, had all the elements of a classic whodunnit: a gunpoint robbery, futile searches by the police and an ingenuous hiding place, almost in plain sight. Even the judge, while handing the gem to its owner last week, couldn’t resist comparing it to the Feluda classic ‘Joy Baba Felunath’.

Apologies for the spoiler, but in the Satyajit Ray classic, the precious item was hidden inside the mouth of a Durga idol’s lion. Here, the diamond, presently valued at around Rs 15 crore, was hidden by the robber inside a switchboard under a staircase.
The crime happened in 2002, when south Kolkata resident Pranab Kumar Roy, the diamond’s owner, was looking for a valuer for it. In June that year, Indrajit Tapadar, a diamond broker, reached Roy’s house with a valuer. Roy later said that he suspected the duo from the way they handled the diamond, set on a gold ring, and asked them to hand it over to him. At that point, according to Roy, Tapadar took out a pistol and gave the diamond to the other person. Roy got into a scuffle with Tapadar, during which the latter’s companion jumped on Roy, pinning him to the ground. After that, the duo fled with the diamond, Roy had told the police.

The police, who were investigating the case, were quick in finding out where Tapadar lived. But, even though they instinctively felt that the stone was at his house, they simply could not find it even after several searches. Finally, just as even the most dogged among them were about to give up, they found the stone, carefully tucked away inside the switchboard cavity near a meter box under a staircase. The cops had passed that spot every time while going in to search, but no one thought of looking there.
The manner in which it all unfolded and the diamond was recovered, prompted judge Ananda Sankar Mukhopadhyay to find similarities with ‘Joy Baba Felunath’.