Don't keep gold at home, says UK Indians told

London, Jan 18: Amidst a spate of robberies for gold items in homes belonging to people from the Indian subcontinent, the British police today issued specific crime prevention advice asking members of the community not to keep gold items at home.

Such robberies have been reported from various parts of Britain, particularly from places with high concentration of the Asian community that traditionally saves and stores gold in their houses.

These include parts of London, Reading, Leicester and Birmingham.

Steve Smith, of the Thames Valley Police force, said: "Ideally, we would prefer for people not to keep high value gold at home given what we are experiencing, not only in areas of our force but nationally, due to the value of Asian gold and its purity".

He added: "However, we understand that it may not always be possible to deposit it in banks or that some families may not wish to leave their valuables in someone else's possession.

"In such circumstances therefore, we are strongly advising people to invest in a safe, which must comply with certain standards and be approved by your home-insurer. Without this, you may lose out on thousands of pounds if you are burgled".

The police issued detailed guidelines to the community to prevent crime, including details of safes, insurance, keeping an inventory of jewellery owned, to keep photographs of the items, and to use forensic marking to identify jewellery.

Burglary for gold was considered a "significant" line of inquiry in the investigation into the double murders of Avtar Singh Kolar and Carole Kolar in Birmingham, but it has now been ruled out by detectives.

PTI