Mumbai: A domestic help allegedly stole Rs 10 lakh in cash from a secret compartment in the bedroom ceiling of her employer’s elderly parents’ home in Mumbai. The theft was discovered on Sept 9 when the wife of the 49-year-old corporate lawyer, a Bandra (West) resident who earlier practised at Bombay High Court, visited their parents’ home to collect the money and found it missing. Bandra police arrested domestic help Tanuja Mandal (31) soon after an FIR was registered on Monday. The lawyer had kept the cash in the secret compartment to pay for his daughter’s engineering admission.Mandal continued working at the home even after allegedly stealing the money. The lawyer and his wife, also a lawyer, suspected Mandal because no one else had visited the Bandra (West) flat the previous week. A Bandra police station officer said Mandal broke down during questioning and admitted stealing the cash to buy a vehicle for her husband. She had worked for the senior citizen couple as a caretaker and domestic worker for a year and discovered the compartment while cleaning.Acting on the complaint, a team supervised by DCP (West Zone-2) Mohit Garg recovered the entire stolen cash from Mandal. The team comprised ACP Adikrao Pol, senior inspector Ravindra Salunkhe, inspector Ajay Lingnurkar, assistant inspector Yash Palwe, and other personnel. A police officer said the lawyer couple had borrowed the money from family, friends and relatives to pay their daughter’s engineering college admission fees. They were relieved that Mandal had not harmed their elderly parents or discovered the gold ornaments kept in a cupboard.The lawyer alleged in an FIR that the domestic worker, Mandal, stole cash kept in a secret compartment in the bedroom ceiling of his parents’ flat. “I had kept the cash there on Sept. 9 for my daughter’s admission. The next day, after her admission was confirmed based on the merit list, my wife went to collect the money for depositing in a bank but could not find it,” said the lawyer in the FIR.A police officer said they detained Mandal after verifying the CCTV camera footages from the building and the guest entry record at the gate and seized th money.
