A burglary at a retired Tata Steel employee’s house, near the chief minister’s residence in Agrico, has left police flummoxed.

While the intruders have managed to clean out gold and cash worth Rs 4.5 lakh, investigating officers are clueless on how they entered the property whose ventilators were sealed with cement and whose doors and windows showed no signs of damage.

Alok Sinha, a retired Tata Steel employee, and his wife Neelima had left their house on Agrico Main Road under Sidhgora thana to attend a friend’s party at Vijaya Heritage in Kadma at 8pm on Sunday.

On their return around 12.15am, they found the wooden almirah lying open with no trace of the cash and gold ornaments.

Spot investigation revealed that the burglars had opened the shutter of the verandah at the back of the house, but Sinha said he distinctly remembered having locked the shutter from inside before leaving.

“Usually, people install iron grille in verandas to prevent thefts, but I had installed a shutter because I had heard instances where thieves use gas cutters to cut open the grille,” Sinha, who has been staying at the house for the past 15 years, said.

Sinha said he had even closed the ventilators of the house as a shield against thefts, which were a regular affair in the locality when he moved in.

“When we were leaving for Kadma, we spotted a youth moving around suspiciously in front of our house. He was on the phone and sneaked into the nearby lane after seeing us,” Sinha said.

A police team led by Sidhgora thana OC Ashok Kumar visited the spot soon after Sinha’s complaint.

Confirming the burglary at quarter No. 53, Kumar said, “Though cash and gold jewellery worth over Rs 4.5 lakh have been stolen, we are yet to find out exactly how the thieves enter the house without breaking the lock.”

He said the intruders had jumped a boundary wall to enter the premises, but couldn’t shed light on how they could open the lock of the shutter without getting into the house.

“Even senior police officials who visited the spot could not detect how it was done,” the OC said, adding that the investigation is on.