Officers hold up jewellery recovered from Khan. (PTI)

Hyderabad, Sept. 26: He’s a former All-India Congress Committee member, a freedom fighter and Karnataka governor-designate to boot. What’s more, he would have made Dev Anand look like a wimp had he essayed the Jewel Thief.

Meet Sabir Ali Khan Chengiz, 58, who teamed up with a street-smart trickster to take bankers and high-street jewellers on an endless ride.

Their exploits are many, but the one grabbing attention is a diamond heist Andhra Pradesh police unearthed over the weekend. The plot was hatched in Delhi, the operation carried out in Hyderabad and the booty stashed away in a remote Chittoor farm — all that in the name of a “would-be governor”.

The modus operandi was as stunning as the victims’ gullibility. Chengiz posed as a well-connected Congress leader in Delhi who could pull strings in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and in a powerful lobby within AICC .

Chengiz was introduced by his partner-in-crime Mohammed Shahid Khan, 50, to jewellers from across the country as a man who was about to be appointed a governor.

Early last month, the act was replayed on Ravi Pandya, a Hyderabad jeweller who was lured into presenting his wares at a hotel. The duo reportedly said they were calling from Raj Bhavan, where “they were the ‘guest of the Andhra Pradesh governor’.” Both even used a car with a Raj Bhavan insignia for the hotel rendezvous.

Once price negotiations were over, they asked Pandya to “collect the payment” from him in Delhi. When the jeweller did not find a trace of the duo — he was told they never lived at the address — in the capital, he returned to Hyderabad and lodged a police complaint.

Khan was a resident of Tirupati. The police got wind of his activities from his second wife and picked him up from a Hyderabad hotel early this month. He disclosed that the diamonds were stashed at a farm in Chittoor’s Aravindpalli village. The police said they recovered 13 boxes full of stones and diamonds, buried deep inside a two-feet ditch.

Chengzi, arrested last night from a Secunderabad house, was caught in early March with a bag in which he was allegedly carrying Rs 25 lakh to buy a Delhi businessman a Rajya Sabha membership from Andhra Pradesh.

According to city police commissioner A.K. Mohanty, Chengiz has nine cases of cheating and impersonation pending against him in Delhi. He would often say he was a freedom fighter in an attempt to make his “high standing in the AICC” look convincing, the police said.