Six armed men raided a jewellery showroom here on Wednesday night and decamped with gold and diamond ornaments and cash purported to be valued around Rs 5 crore.

Murarilal Agarwal, who owns Ganpati Jewellers, said the robbers had entered the shop on GT Road around 8pm posing as customers.

“They held our employees and the security guard at gunpoint, forced them into a room in the shop and locked it. They escaped with all gold and diamond jewelleries and cash,” said Agarwal.

Sources said the looted jewelleries and cash were valued around Rs 5 crore.

The shop at old Ramkrishna Mission Ashram crossing is located barely 500m from Asansol (South) police station. The police said they had alerted all police stations in Asansol and neighbouring Jharkhand to track down the robbers.

“We have come to know from our sources that robbers had come on motorbikes and escaped towards Jharkhand after the crime,” said a police officer.

Asansol is barely 25km from the Bengal-Jharkhand border.

The raid occurred when the employees were assessing the day’s transactions and the shutter was half down.

Agarwal said two of the robbers were wearing helmets and all of them had spoken in Hindi.

“I can recall that one of the burglars came to my shop on Tuesday and bought a small piece of gold jewellery. I think he had come to inspect the shop before committing the crime,” said the jeweller.

Agarwal claimed the robbers had a drinking session before leaving the shop after the hour-long raid. “They stuffed the ornaments and cash in bags they were carrying and left,” said Agarwal.

The robbers took away the CCTV hard disc and monitor before leaving.

After the burglars had left, the jewellery employees broke open the door and informed the police.

The police immediately reached the showroom.

“Altogether 5kg of gold and cash were looted. We have launched a search for them and alerted all police stations,” said Sayak Das, assistant commissioner of police (central).