"I don't know what more you can do to secure you place," lamented one Bourda Market stallholder yesterday morning after discovering bandits had torched their way into his stall and vaults carting off some 1,000 pennyweights in gold jewellery and 4,000 in silver valued some $10 million.

Ronald Mohan also called 'Skipper', related that when he went to open his stall, Pop's and Ricky Jewellery, for business yesterday morning, he noticed that the padlock had been cut off the small grill gate.

The thieves then ducked into the stall, and cut open the two vaults inside. "This is a setback. I had about 1,000 pennyweights in gold jewellery and about 4,000 in silver.... I don't know. I just open here in November. I rent the stall from a friend who went away," Mohan said.

He said the men had first cut the padlocks off the vaults but they were further secured with in-set locks, "if you see them safes is them real old-time safe," so they cut big holes in the sides, "about eight inches by four inches," Mohan said.

A piece of the roof of the stall was scorched from the heat of the torching that went on inside. The telephone line was also cut.

When this newspaper visited, City Constabulary investigating officers including Chief Investigating Officer, Trevor Merriman, were at the scene.

Budhu-jewellery  Bourda-Market-vendors  Bandits_NA_market

He noted that though the market would have been officially closed yesterday, a national holiday, persons would still go "you know to clean or fix their stalls and so," and whatever was needed could have been set-up yesterday.

Another officer pointed out that the cylinders could have entered the market inside boxes disguised as goods.

Two stallholders were handed over to the police by the City Constabulary, after it was alleged that they had kept the cylinders used to cut into the vaults of two Stabroek Market jewellery stalls in July last year in robberies very similar to that yesterday where as alleged $60M was stolen.

The stallholders were later released on bail and no one was ever formally charged with those robberies.

Security was beefed up though, to include private security guards. Stallholders had asked that the lighting inside the market be improved to allow city constables to also patrol inside the market.