KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 4 — Questions surround a break-in at a jewellery store in 1 Utama shopping complex here, where more than RM1 million in jewellery was taken during the Chinese New Year holiday.
Petaling Jaya police chief ACP Arjunadi Mohamed said the store, which was closed from Thursday, was due to open yesterday.
Instead, the store’s employees came in at 10am to find two of the three safes containing jewellery were broken into.
“We received the report at 10.40am and upon inspection, noticed that the safes, stored in the back room of the store, were broken into with an oxy acetelene torch used to melt safe doors,” said Arjunaidi.
Arjunaidi said police believe the culprit had entered the store through its back door during one of the four days the store was closed.
“The store was equipped with an alarm, but somehow it was turned off during the holidays.”
A police source said: “We suspect it might be an inside job, because everything was organised professionally and the culprit knew the workings of the store, such as how to turn off the alarm and where the CCTV recordings were stored.”
Although police were still totalling the actual losses, the source said the figure was more than RM1 million.
“They took all the jewellery stored inside the safes, and left only small items, such as rings and bracelets, that do not cost very much.”
A store employee, who declined to be named, said she was surprised to see more than half of the jewellery missing when she came in yesterday morning.
“We made sure all the security was in place before we left for the holidays. I don’t know how the culprit managed to break in unnoticed.”
