In the year 2002, Mr. P. K. Roy, a resident of Kolkata, requested a diamond merchant to find a valuer for a big diamond in his possession. It was a 32-carat Golkonda diamond, no less!, set in a gold ring. The broker turned up with a valuer at his house. The way they conducted themselves and handled the stone made Mr. Roy suspicious and he asked for the stone back. The broker swiftly took out a pistol, pinned Roy to the ground and asked his accomplice to run away with the stone. He too, legged it successfully.
Mr. Roy filed a police complaint. The police traced the whereabouts of both the merchant and his accomplice but could not locate the stone. They thoroughly searched the house of the accomplice several times. Mr. Roy approached the court. The case ended recently after the stone was recovered and handed over to Roy. It is currently valued at Rs. 15 crore.
The accomplice lived on the first floor and below the staircase there was a switch-board. All these years, the diamond was tucked away, neatly wrapped in paper, in one corner of the cavity of the board. The police passed it several times when they conducted their searches. Suddenly, a few months ago, one policeman, just felt like it and looked at the cavity on a whim. The board was outside the accomplice's home and so no one had looked for it there.
The judge invoked a Feluda story (Feluda was a fictional detective created by Satyajit Ray) where a thief hides a precious stone in the mouth of a stone lion, the carrier of goddess Durga.
(The Times of India, 14 August 2023)
