A businessman from Nepal was busy presiding over his daughter’s wedding reception in a hotel, while his room in a guest house was being burgled on Sunday night.

Cash, ornaments and other valuables worth Rs 8.34 lakh were stolen.

The alleged burglar had been a constant companion of Suresh Bansal, the businessman, ever since he and around 90 relatives checked into Baba Sagar, on the EM Bypass, in Beleghata, on Friday evening.

Bansal thought the man was on the staff of the guest house, while the Baba Sagar management assumed that he was part of the marriage party.

The businessman has even identified the “fair, handsome youth, aged around 30” from the photographs in the police file. The police, however, refused to name him for the sake of investigation.

The youth surfaced before Bansal around noon on Saturday, eager to help him and his entourage. Taken in by his “smart gait and sweet talk”, Bansal thought the youth was an official of the guest house.

“We had booked eight suites in the guest house. He was roaming around, visiting each room and offering to help us in every possible way. A stain on a bedspread had him picking up the phone and summoning the room-service boys for a change,” Bansal recalled on Monday.

The way he carried himself, on the other hand, led the guest house staff to believe that he was a Bansal relative.

“He was rushing to our room service boys with various demands. He even shared the room with the cooks whom Bansal had brought along. He didn’t seem to be a crook,” said a Baba Sagar official.

Around 4pm on Sunday, Bansal, along with his relatives, left for a Park Street hotel where his daughter Nisha was to tie the knot with a Burrabazar-based trader.

Around 8pm, the youth turned up at Baba Sagar and asked the man at the reception for the key to Bansal’s room, saying the businessman had left behind the wedding ring.

The receptionist found no reason to deny him the key, but asked a room service boy to accompany the youth. Sensing trouble, the burglar said he needed to be alone as he would have to go to the toilet.

“Taking the key, he ran up the stairs, entered the room, broke open the suitcases and jewellery boxes and took away everything he could lay his hands on. It took him less than 15 minutes to finish the operation. While leaving, he submitted the key to the receptionist,” said a police officer.

The theft was discovered around 10am, when one of Bansal’s relatives entered the room.

V.K. Kapoor, the owner of Baba Sagar, ruled out the involvement of his employees in the burglary.

The police, however, said they are probing the crime from all possible angles.

“We are not ruling out any possibility. We have conducted a number of raids and alerted the airport, railways and a few bus stands,” said an officer of Beleghata police station.