Simply known as the opera house heist, it has managed to be known as India’s most cleverly plotted heist ever. This case has gained so much fame and attention that 3 movies and a book has been adapted based on this real incident. The popularity is mainly because, the heist took place in broad daylight, it was so cleverly planned that no one ever doubted what was happening around them.
Inamdar, the investigation officer had received a call from the city’s biggest jeweler, who doubted to have been cheated by a fake CBI raid. The details received from the other end sounded almost like a usual CBI raid, except for the claim that the team’s leader has disappeared with jewel samples, cash and a licensed pistol that belonged to the jeweler.
The story starts with Mon Singh (Mohan Singh), an individual claiming to be a CBI officer. Mon Singh books a room (No 415) at the Taj intercontinental, on 17th March 1987 and gives an advertisement in the Indian express seeking “Dynamic graduates for the post of intelligence officer and security officer”. The advertisement said there was about 50 vacancies and included the whereabouts of the interview. The next day, Mon Singh conducted the interview and selected about 26 candidates. Later he informed his 26 candidates about the ‘mock raid’ that was about to happen the next day and that their performance in that raid would be evaluated in assigning their postings.
On the day of the heist, Mon Singh books a luxury coach from the Taj and picks his 26 candidates to the Opera house. There he distributes CBI identity cards and badges to the candidates. Then Mon Singh instructs his team on the protocols they were supposed to follow during the raid.
Mon Singh leads his team to the city’s most famous, Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri jewelley, located within the Opera house. Mon Singh and the team start evacuating the customers and staffs out of the store ,closes down the shutter, orders the CCTV cameras to be put off and cuts off the phone lines. The teams starts to cross check the store’s registers and once it was done, Mon Singh produces a search warrant to the store’s owner, Pratap Zaveri. He starts collecting samples from the jewels stacked in the store and gathers cash from the counter. Now Mon Singh asks the owner to surrender his licensed pistol and seals everything separately in poly bags with government seals on them.
As his witty plot is now nearing the end, Mon Singh claiming to have to supervise another raid taking place in the same vicinity, he leaves his team in the store and escapes with the jewels and the cash. By the time, Inamdar (the case’s investigation officer) reached the store, Mon Singh managed to escape in the same bus back to Taj hotel, where he vacated his room and disappeared.
From the investigation it was known that Mon Singh booked a taxi from Taj hotel, travelled to Ville Parle, from there took an auto and after that he left no trial. When they enquired about the identifications he had left with the hotel, the investigation lead to Trivandrum, Kerala, where a man named George Augustine was taken into custody and enquired, he was later recognized to be a petty thief and released. Further an investigation team was sent to Dubai based on a lead, but that did not fetch anything. To this day, the case remains unsolved and the evidences have led nowhere into catching the culprit or identifying his real self.
The net amount, identified to have been taken by Mon Singh sum around 35 lakhs (3 – 3.5 Crore in Indian rupee value estimated for 2019). This incident was later adapted into
· Khel - A 1992 Hindi film had a small heist sequence inspired by this incident.
· Special 26 - A Bollywood film, directed by Neeraj Pandey, is based on the heist. The movie was remade in Tamil as Thaanaa Serndha Koottam in Tamil.
· The Sailkot Saga - A book by Ashwin Sanghi has referenced the heist, too.
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