In Mumbai, bag of gold jewellery dragged away by rats, found in gutter

A woman in Mumbai mistakenly gave away her bag of gold jewellery to a beggar (Representative Image)

Police in Mumbai have helped recover a bag of gold ornaments that was mistakenly given away to a beggar, dumped in a garbage heap, dragged away by rats and ended up in a gutter where it was finally found.

This series of bizarre events unspooled when 45-year-old Sundari Planibel, who works as a domestic servant in the Mumbai suburb of Goregaon, was on her way to the bank to deposit a bag of gold ornaments worth Rs 5 lakh, reports NDTV. In the same bag, she had a vada pav that was given to her by her employer.

On her way to the bank, Planibel came across a beggar and her children and gave the bag of vada pav to them, not realising that her gold jewellery was kept in the same bag. She realised her mistake only on reaching the bank and immediately rushed to the Dindoshi police station to file a complaint.

“She did not inform her husband. She told us she felt like harming herself. She was very depressed. We gave her confidence. We said we would surely do our best. We told her relatives and her husband not to scold her over the incident because she was already tense and depressed,” Suraj Pawar, an assistant police inspector with the Dindoshi police, told Indian Express.

Pawar worked with other cops to track down the beggar woman who had unwittingly received the pouch of gold jewellery. She told police that she threw the bag into a garbage dump as she did not want to eat the dry vada pav.

After examining low-quality CCTV footage from a surveillance camera installed in the area where the woman dumped the bag, police found that some rats had dragged it away to a nearby gutter.

Cops finally managed to recover the bag of gold and reunite it with its rightful owner. “Three gold chains, six finger rings, and a couple of earrings were found as described by the domestic help. We returned it to her on Wednesday,” said a police inspector.