The curious case of the missing jewels

Bangalore has never seen a case like this. A wealthy family is robbed of numerous valuables by their household staff over several years. The family remains blissfully ignorant. The theft is revealed in a roundabout manner, when the police find some expensive jewellery in the hands of an unlikely person in a neighbouring district. They trace it back to the family’s domestic help, who confess. A police case is registered.

The case involves the Bangalore-based D.K. Adikesavulu, former Congress party MP from Andhra Pradesh. The influential Adikesavulu is a dollar-billionaire whose business interests include liquor, steel, sugar, real estate, engineering and medical colleges across south India. The recovered goods are conservatively estimated at the value of Rs 1.5 crore. Son Adi Srinivas Naidu said that some missing antiques go back several generations, have never been valued, and can best be described as “priceless”.

Some see the Adikesavulu theft case as symptomatic of India’s yawning rich-poor divide. In Bangalore, economic inequality is not as visible as in Mumbai or New Delhi, but nevertheless manifests itself in several ways. Many poor families arrive in this expensive city daily and seek domestic work due to a lack of skills. Police stations across the city have seen a sharp increase in the registration of theft cases against domestic help. In the Adikesavulu case, however, the family barely noticed that many valuables had been disappearing.

Akram assumed the name of Ajay and inveigled himself into Adikesavulu’s

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