Yesterday evening, the custodian of the court’s case items storage filed a complaint with the Keselwatta police station regarding the disappearance of two molten gold ingots related to two cases in the case items storage of the court in Aluthkade.
Accordingly, a stock of gold worth 44 pounds has been stolen. According to the current market value, the value of this gold will be around Rs. 100 million.
These two gold bars were found as case items related to two police stations in Colombo and the warehouse keeper told the police that a person said to be a constable of the Criminal Investigation Department had taken these two gold bars on the 23rd. The storekeeper said that the official took the two gold bars saying that they had to submit a report to the Gems and Jewellery Authority.
In this regard, higher police officers say that case items are not released immediately upon an officer’s request and there should be a court order for it. When questioned about this, the storekeeper said he was shown an order. But the police say that it is a problem that he did not get a copy of the said court order and document it.
It has been found in the preliminary investigation that it is problematic to hand over two cases related to two police stations in Colombo to an officer who claimed to be CID and also since these two gold nuggets are related to two cases, there should be two court orders.
If a police officer receives a case item from the case items storage, keeping a record of the officer’s name, position, ID number, etc is a common practice. But the police say that the disappearance of these gold nuggets raises serious doubts as the case items storekeeper has not recorded any of them.
