After allegedly duping over 50 jewellers of their gold worth Rs 5 crore, a jeweller-turned-agent, is giving a nightmare to cops.

The accused, Manoj Ramesh Chandra Sharma, now in custody of the LT Marg police, has reportedly carried out complex gold transactions with such a large number of jewellers that the cops are finding it tough to trace the gold and are struggling to get concrete evidence against him.

“Sharma used to run a gold business a few years back but after he ran into losses, he began working as an agent, buying and selling gold for jewellers. Sharma used to take gold ornaments from them and sell it but there was no written agreement between them. Instead of giving the jewellers the amount earned from the sale in cash, he insisted on giving them an equivalent amount of ‘pure gold’. He deducted some gold as his commission,” said an official from the L T Marg police station.

“If he took around 1,000 gm of gold jewellery to sell, and had to give back the equivalent amount earned in the sale in pure gold, he would keep 100-150 gm extra to himself in addition to his commission. He would use the extra gold to repay another jeweller. In a day he would visit five-six jewellers,” said the official.

According to the police, he had been dealing with the jewellers for the past few years and had started to dupe them only a few months ago.

Senior police inspector J R Sarmokadam said, “Last month, the Kandivali police arrested him after several jewellers in Kandivali and Borivali complained. We took him into custody on July 10, as several jewellers from Zaveri Bazar had lodged complaints with us. We have his logbooks where he has noted down transactions. But no major clue has emerged out of that.”

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