A youth’s desperate bid to gift an iPhone to his girlfriend landed him in jail, police said.

Chanchal Bhuniya, 22, allegedly used a duplicate key to sneak into a Ballygunge cafe where he worked and stole ₹2.5 lakh from the cash box to buy the phone, the police said.

A theft of ₹2,53,000 was reported at the Ballygunge police station on Thursday.

During the investigation, the police noticed two things that made them suspect that it was an “insider’s job”, sources said.

“First, the cash box was empty, but there were no signs of a break-in. Second, the power supply to the CCTV recorder had been disconnected at 4.30am. Both the facts indicated that the thief knew the cafe from the inside,” said an officer of Ballygunge police station.

Bhuniya was arrested after his phone call details (CDR) showed that he had booked an app bike on Thursday morning to come to Ballygunge from his home at Mograhat in South 24-Parganas, hours before the theft was reported.

Bhuniya was arrested at his house early on Friday, the police said.

According to the police, they had contacted the app cab company and confirmed that Bhuniya had come from Mograhat to the cafe in Ballygunge as early as 4am on Thursday.

Bhuniya reportedly told the police that he had made a duplicate key to the cash box and had been planning the theft for a few weeks to arrange money to buy the expensive gift for his girlfriend, said an officer.

“Bhuniya has confessed to his crime, and ₹49,920 has been recovered from his home. Based on his statement, we also recovered an iPhone 16 Pro Max worth ₹1.53 lakh from his girlfriend, along with the cash memo,” said deputy commissioner (south east division), Kolkata Police, Bholanath Pandey.