Cuttack, Aug. 29: Police today cracked a loot and a theft case that took place in the city earlier this month and arrested seven persons.

In the first case, Rs 14 lakh in cash was looted at gunpoint from the office of an electronics equipment stockist at Chandi Chakh on August 4 and in the second case, gold and diamond ornaments worth Rs 25 lakh was stolen from a house at Chauliaganj on August 8.

The robbery plan at the house at Chauliaganj was allegedly hatched by jeweller Ajaya Kumar Das and his accomplices Udaya Maharana, Pramod Maharana and Santosh Kundu.

All of them are natives of Jajpur. Chandan Sahani of Chandikhole, who worked as a domestic help at the house at Chauliaganj, allegedly passed on information to them about the valuable ornaments.

The police had started investigating into the case after industrialist Purushottam Lal Kandoi lodged a complaint at the Chauliaganj police station on August 20.

Purushottam's brother's wife Veena Kandoi was out of station for one month from July 10. When she returned on the night of August 11, she found gold and diamond ornaments worth Rs 25 lakh missing from the almirah in her bedroom.

The police complaint mentioned that among the missing ornaments, there were three diamond-studded bangles, one gold necklace set, two pairs of gold earrings and one diamond-studded gold chain.

The domestic help - Chandan Sahani - was the only person present in the house during Veena's absence. The needle of suspicion naturally got pointed at him when he was found missing immediately after Veena's return. Police were able to reach a breakthrough in the case after tracking down Chandan at Chandikhole on Sunday.

"Upon interrogating him, we came to know about the involvement of others in the case," Chauliaganj police station inspector-in-charge Ajay Das said.

"After melting the ornaments at Ajay's jewellery shop, they were sold to another jewellery shop at Nimchouri," Das said.

Subsequently, the principal accused, Chandan, 24, was arrested along with Ajay, 40, and the receivers of the ornaments - Rahul Fate, 23, Aniket Bhatekar, 22, and Narayan More, 24, yesterday.

"They have confessed their involvement in the theft. Further investigation is in progress and efforts are on to round up the three other accused persons - Udaya, Pramod and Santosh," the police officer said.

Two pieces of gold weighing 302 grams and 140 grams, 34 diamond pieces, Rs 27,190 in cash, a set of keys, two hard disks and a computer were recovered from the accused.

In the other case, police yesterday busted an inter-district gang of robbers with the arrest of two persons in connection with the robbery at the office of Adinath Agency at Chandi Chakh in Cantonment police station limits on August 4.

More than half a dozen masked robbers had entered the agency office around 5.25pm, disconnected the wire of CCTV camera and carried out the robbery at gunpoint. They had allegedly fled with Rs 14 lakh in cash after locking the agency office from outside.

"We made the breakthrough after nabbing Jitendra Dash, 24, of Kandarpur and Girish Chandra Sahoo, 29, of Mansinghpatana," Cantonment police station inspector-in-charge Biswajit Mohanty said.

The police also seized Rs 81,000 in cash, a motorcycle and one bhujali from them.