You could say a little mystery has put Rhea Kapoor’s trip in the limelight. With two sets of diamond-encrusted earrings vanishing along the way, the police are on it. It is the sort of hiccup you don’t want to have when you are Sonam’s sister and a red carpet is looming.
The whole thing only came to light once the party was in a Manhattan hotel room, per the police report. The jewellery had been through airports and time zones by then, so there is a bit of a puzzle for the authorities to put together.
Why everyone is looking at this
The figures do the talking: Rs 66 lakh and another 69 lakh, all for one outfit, making 1.35 crore in total. Toss in a team with name recognition, a trip abroad and some empty boxes at the eleventh hour, and you have your story.
It is also a thorny issue for the business side of things. You would think a rental like this would be handled with a fine-tooth comb, but here we are with two unaccounted-for boxes and no clear sign of a break-in. Hard to look past that.
When they put two and two together
The letdown was in The Pierre in New York. Makeup artist Savleen Singh was opening up to give a pair of earrings to her colleague Shireen when, as the complaint puts it, she was met with nothing but empty containers.
These were for Rhea’s April 29 Met Gala. The paperwork says Singh was holding the boxes in her bag for the duration of the trip to make sure they made it to the event.
A look at what was in there
If you read the police file, you see two items. From Mehta Jewellers, a set of emerald and gold diamond studs at 66 lakh. Then from Goenka, some Zambian emeralds with a gold border for 69 lakh.
All in, 1.35 crore is off the books. Mumbai Police say they were both on rent from their respective shops in the city for the occasion.
Tracing the steps
They are going over the itinerary. The group left on an Emirates out of Mumbai for Dubai on the 27th at 10:25 PM, with New York in view. They put down at JFK on the 28th around 5:30 PM.
Then they made their way to The Pierre. Since the emptiness of the boxes was only a post-check-in discovery, the investigation now has to cover ground in two countries and every port of call in between.
What we know for sure
This is what is in the record:
– Sahar Police Station has a case on its books.
– An FIR has been filed, Section 303(2) of the BNS.
– It was Savleen Singh who put in the complaint.
– No one has been put in the crosshairs yet.
– They are looking at the travel trail and any footage they can find.
Once back in town, Singh made the call and the case was made. For now, the cops are trying to zero in on where the earrings were left behind on the way over.
The reality of the job
If you are in the styling game, this is a bad day made manifest: you have a deadline, you are working with pieces you didn’t buy, and one thing goes wrong and the whole plan is in tatters.
It is how the industry is these days. You need the right piece to make a statement, and if you are renting something special, the margin for error is non-existent. A slip-up has a price tag, and sometimes legal ones too.
Where it goes from here
For the moment, it is about following the thread. The investigators are walking the line from the Mumbai terminal, through the stop in Dubai, to the hotel in New York to see how the chain of custody was broken.
Put a finger on where they went and you have a chance to get them back. But for now, the big question is the most compelling one: how do you lose two boxes of value in transit and not even see it happen?
It is a luxury problem, but the lesson is in the logistics. When you have crores in a handbag and you are crossing borders, you can’t have any loose ends. That is what a lot of people will be taking to heart.
