The facade of an Indian-owned Bay Area Jewelry store
The facade of Indian-owned Bombay Jewelry Company in Berkeley that was looted in July 2024 (image courtesy: Facebook)

On the afternoon of July 6, armed suspects broke into the Bombay Jewelry Company on University Avenue in Berkeley and stole jewelry worth $500,000. It’s the fourth Bay Area Indian jewelry store to be looted in the past nine weeks. 

In an email statement, the Berkeley Police Department said that seven or eight suspects armed with firearms and sledgehammers forced their way into the store located on University Avenue around 2 p.m. on Saturday. They broke display cases and used their weapons to threaten customers and staff, before escaping with jewelry worth half a million dollars from the store. 

The Berkeley Police Department is investigating the incident actively but did not comment on whether this robbery is linked to similar thefts at Nitin Jewelers, PNG Jewelers in Sunnyvale, and Bhindi Jewelers in Newark earlier this year.. 

This is a developing story.

Tanay Gokhale is a California Local News Fellow and the Community Reporter at India Currents. Born and raised in Nashik, India, he moved to the United States for graduate study in video journalism after...