An amount of ₹39 lakh recovered in a theft case has been lying at the Antop Hill police station as neither the complainant, a superintendent with the Goods and Services Tax (GST) department, nor the accused, an executive assistant at the department, are willing to claim it.
On June 10, GST superintendent Umesh Yogendra Narayan, 32, submitted a complaint to the Antop Hill police about a theft at his residence in the Central Government Employees Society (CGS) in Antop Hill. Narayan, whose wife stays in Patna, alleged that when he returned from work on June 9, he found the door of his house ajar and valuables worth ₹6.95 lakh including cash, his laptop and his wife’s jewellery were missing.
Based on Narayan’s complaint, police registered a case under sections 305 (a) (theft in a dwelling house) and 331 (3) (house trespass) of the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023. While probing the matter, they found that Narayan’s wife had moved to Patna in June 2024 and he had been living alone in Mumbai for nearly 16 months. This raised doubts about the presence of her jewellery in the house, which Narayan claimed had been stolen.
The police also learned that Narayan had given a spare key to his residence to his colleague, Deepak Dahiya, who worked as an executive assistant in the GST department. Police suspected that though Dahiya left for work with Narayan in his car on June 9, he returned and carried out the theft later in the day.
“We conducted a search at Dahiya’s residence based on suspicion and recovered ₹39 lakh from under his bed,” an officer aware of the matter said. “Dahiya claimed the money belonged to Narayan. But Narayan denied the same.”
Dahiya was arrested on June 13 and granted bail on Sunday. He has since been suspended by the GST department.
Police suspect that of the ₹39 lakh recovered from Dahiya’s house, only ₹5 lakh belonged to him while ₹34 lakh belonged to Narayan.
“It was likely black money that Narayan was holding, which he wanted to report as stolen,” said the officer quoted earlier. “But since he would not be able to account for the cash, he claimed in the complaint that his wife’s jewellery had been stolen.”
With neither the complainant nor the accused claiming the recovered amount, the anti-corruption wing of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is likely to register an offence in the matter soon, the officer noted.
“CBI officers have already started recording statements in the matter,” the officer said.
