An 18-year-long legal struggle and a court order later, a 48-year-old woman reclaimed her gold chain that was snatched by bike-borne robbers in 2006.
The complainant, Anjana Hasmukh Patel, was robbed while she was on the way to her residence at Dhruv Tarak Society in Katargam after visiting a relative on August 30, 2006. The alleged chain snatchers — Chetan Patel and Jignesh Vaghani — were nabbed on October 4, 2006. However, the duo had already sold the gold chain to a Surat jeweller. The jeweller had melted the gold chain weighing 20.25 g. The police recovered the melted gold from the jeweller but Anjana could not recover it as the court case dragged on for almost two decades.
To add to the complications, the floods that had hit Surat on August 7 had washed away the bill of the gold chain purchase. “Even the jewellery shop from where my husband had bought the chain was also under the flood water and all the data was lost. We had no evidence. From 2007 to 2013, I made regular appearances in the court to get the gold chain back but failed,” said Anjana.
While the Surat district court acquitted the alleged chain snatchers for lack of evidence in October last year, the same order had also directed the police to verify the details of the complainant and hand over the gold to her.
“The complainant had applied to get the robbed chain. The accused had sold it to a jeweller who later melted it. In such cases, the booty seized by the police is only disposed of after the case comes to final judgement. In the court order, the judge had already mentioned that the gold substance should be given to its owner after verification,” assistant public prosecutor J. D. Patel said.
It was like a miracle, Anjanaben said about getting a call from the Chowk Bazar police station to collect the gold chain. “After recovering from the police, I gave it to a jeweller to make two gold neck chains — one each for my daughter and son,” she said. Incidentally, her husband, who is works in the diamond sector of Surat, gifted her the chain on the birth of their first child — son Parth.
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