Two persons who allegedly stole 16 Mughal era shawls from the Crafts Museum in Delhi were arrested by police on Tuesday. A special team of Delhi and Kolkata police nabbed them from Kolkata. However, none of the shawls have been recovered.
They were produced before the court for transit remand and will be taken to Delhi. Kolkata police said the arrested duo is Vinay Parmar and Tarun Hargoria. While Tarun is from Kolkata, Vinay who hails from Gujarat, has relatives in Kolkata.
The Crafts Museum at Delhi’s Pragati Maidan area is run by the Ministry of Textiles and houses around 35,000 old art and craft exhibits, from across India.
Both Vinay and Tarun came to Delhi with a plan to steal the rare collection and sell them. Sixteen of rare Pashmina shawls could cost more than Rs one crore.
“They switched off their mobile phones at the entrance and only turned them on in Kolkata two days back. The CCTV in the museum showed that they entered the museum but none could see how they came out of the museum,” said an officer of the special crime branch in Kolkata police.
