A mild-mannered, ?helpful? physiotherapist in his 30s has been caught for stealing around Rs 3 lakh worth of gold jewellery from city stores.

Kaushik Sen, a resident of Mandeville Gardens, was arrested on Monday by the Bhowanipore police.

?We have received complaints about this man from a few shops, but he would slip away every time we tried to apprehend him,? said Amit Mukherjee, acting officer-in-charge, Bhowanipore police station.

On Monday, however, Sen?s luck ran out. ?A few shop owners spotted him and grabbed him by the collar. Later, they turned him over to us. He has been arrested under IPC section 420,? added Mukherjee.

Fluent in English and impeccably dressed, Sen managed to charm his way into the shops, getting the owners to go as far as accepting cheques and following his instructions.

According to shop-owners in Bhowanipore, he would usually turn up in new cars with a stethoscope around his neck. After winning over the confidence of the owners or the staff, he would go on a shopping spree, picking up necklaces, bangles and rings of his choice.

Sen would then tell the sales executives he would be paying by cheque. While a few of the first cheques would be honoured, subsequently they would all bounce.

?Sen posed as a refined man with perfect manners. He even arrived in a car with a red VIP light once. While issuing cheques, he warned us it could take a day or two for the money to reach the bank. There was no way one could tell he was a cheat,? said Jayanta Das of Laxmi Narayan Das and Sons, a Bhowanipore shop that lost around Rs 25,000.

Other shop representatives recall the good doctor prescribing medicines for joint pains, an area he claimed was his expertise.

Sen was most daring, too. ?He dropped in before the date he had suggested for cashing his previous cheques and picked up more ornaments,? said an employee at Laxmi Babu Jewellers on Chowringhee Road.

It wasn?t just the cheated shop-owners who were eager to see the smooth operator locked away. Even his family heaved a sigh of relief.

?Kaushik had completed a physiotherapy course and every morning, he would go out claiming to visit patients. It was only after complaints started pouring in that we realised something was wrong,? said an uncle.

For some time, revealed a family member, Sen was being treated by a south Calcutta psychiatrist. ?We are fed up with him,? he said.