The airconditioner vent through which cellphones worth Rs 7 lakh and Rs 1.39 lakh in cash were stolen from an Elgin Road shop. Picture by Sanat Kumar Sinha

Cellphones worth over Rs 7 lakh and Rs 1.39 lakh in cash were stolen from an Elgin Road shop on Tuesday night.

An airconditioner in the rear of Jai Mata Aircon, opposite Sambhunath Pandit Hospital, was found dislodged. Police suspect the gang might have sent a child or a dwarf into the shop through the vent.

“The thieves took away more than 150 handsets of various companies. They also broke open the cash box and took out around Rs 1.39 lakh. We suspect a gang from Rajmahal, in Jharkhand,” said Jawed Shamim, the deputy commissioner (detective department).

The theft was detected around 9.45am on Wednesday, when owner Jagdeep Singh Dua opened Jai Mata Aircon, on the ground floor of a two-storeyed building. “Stepping in, I saw empty cellphone boxes lying on the floor. I immediately informed the police,” said Dua, who also owns an interior decoration shop and a PCO close by.

Dua, who lives in an adjacent building, said he was at Jai Mata Aircon till 9pm on Tuesday. “I closed the showroom myself before leaving for home. At night, I did not hear anything, probably because of the rain.”

The shop doesn’t have a security guard.

“It was a well-planned theft, as the air-conditioning vent is accessible only from a narrow space inside the building and not from the road,” said an investigating officer. “We are not ruling out the possibility of the involvement of an insider.”

The sleuths suspect that the gang had used a long screwdriver and a wrench to dislodge the airconditioner from its metal frame. The gadget was thrown inside the shop and the metal frame was bent to create a gap, around one-and-a-half feet in length and 10 inches in width.

One of the gang members entered the shop through the gap and unpacked the 150-odd cellphones before handing them over to accomplices outside. The next target was the cash box.