Jewel thievery now only a dying gem?

The arrest this week of a large number of ‘veteran’ robbers for the theft of millions of dollars worth of jewellery from the reality star Kim Kardashian in Paris once again draws attention to another dying ‘art’ that requires human skill, albeit in the criminal arena.

Time was when jewel thieves were the stuff of movies from Hollywood to Bollywood, men with not only nimble fingers but brilliant brains too. They were not criminals of the garden variety, crude robbers or murderous dacoits.

Indeed, their choice of target, jewellery and venues were the stuff of mythology. It was practically a matter of pride to be chosen as a ‘victim’ of a jewel heist.

But then, the advent of cyber crime took away the cream of the criminal intelligentsia, it would seem. That the Kardashian caper gang allegedly had members as old as 70 certainly indicates that the jewel thievery genre is no longer attracting young ‘talent’.

Relatively more recent Hollywood odes to this ancient art notwithstanding, the fact is that no thief worth his IQ wants to use his brains or fingers to physically filch anything any more.

He would rather work on a computer to siphon off billions at the click of a button, at his convenience. While that may be more lucrative — keeping in mind that crime does not pay, eventually — it be speaks the death of an art, and perhaps even an era.