Fiften Costly Rings Stolen from the New Alukkas Jewellery showroom in City Centre--Carefour shopping Mall

KM Crime Bureau

Alukkas Jewelry which started its second sales outlet in Oman at the newly opened Carefour Shopping Mall in Mabella has started business with a bad news. In the first two weeks of inaugurating the new supermarket jewelry showroom, about 15 gold bangles have been stolen by unsuspecting customers. According to informed sources, despite the presence of Closed Circuit Televisions and Spy Cameras that can take video pictures of customers from four angles, the Malabari owned jeweler could not control this great act of theft, believed to be committed by a group of Arab women customers. It is also understood that four Egyptian women have stolen the 15 bangles. However, the total weight of the lost bangles is unknown. It is astonishing that despite constant monitoring of the customers through CCTV by dedicated staff, 15 bangles could be stolen in one day.

Shop lifting is a common problem in Oman and shopping malls assume that a certain percentage of total items displayed in the big showrooms are likely to be lifted by someone. However, due to high technology security systems like CCTV and hidden cameras, it is easy to trace the culprits. In this case, the jewelers are understood to have made a formal complaint to the local police. Even before submitting the complaint, they shop owners tried to review the video recordings of several days to identify the real culprits. Since the Arab women wear long dresses, it is difficult even for the cameras to catch all their acts in the shops. If you have visited the new Alukkas shop in Carefour, you will also be a potential suspect because everybody's video picture is stored in the CCTV network.

A high security alarm system links all the jewelry shops in the Ruwi High Street to the local police office. This system is intended to prevent robbers from looting jeweler shops. Whenever someone breaks into a jeweler shop, an automatic alarm starts working inside the shop and a message goes directly to the police office. However on many occasions, the system gave false alarms -- even if a rat enters the shop somehow, the alarm start working! So it seems even high tech systems are not enough to crack down the gold thief? Alukkas may be the number one Indian gold retail outlet in the Middle East, but it is not number one in security aspects even with its high tech security gadgets.