Police and local councillors have launched special awareness campaigns in Birmingham, Slough, Ealing, Leicester, Reading, Bradford and other towns across Britain, warning Asians that many homes belonging to the community are being broken in to because of the rising price of gold and Asian families are known to own gold of higher purity and thus more valuable.

Besides homes, hundreds of jewellery shops have also been targeted.

Police have issued detailed guidelines to the community to prevent crime, including details of safes, insurance, maintaining an inventory of jewellery owned and using forensic marking to identify jewellery.

In Berkshire alone over 200 offences have been reported since last April, but the overwhelming majority of burglaries have occurred in Slough, that has a large Indian origin population.

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With Pongal and Thaipusam celebrations impending, the Consumers Association of Penang cautioned women in Malaysia, particularly housewives and factory workers, who are vulnerable to astrologers from India.

The Association officer N V Subbarao said the astrologers first frighten their clients by predicting problems, then convince them to say special prayers and in the process charge them inflated amounts of money.

Some astrologers scare their clients with stories of ghosts in their homes, or black magic and persuade them to perform exorcism ceremonies that cost them a small fortune. The crooked astrologers even profess to have special talismans from famous Hindu temples for which they charge hundreds of Malaysian Ringgit.

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A US NRI woman age 21 who was staying at the five star Jaypee Vasant Continental Hotel went to the hotel spa with her mother.

She was taken to a separate room because she was exhausted and had a bad headache. The therapist then massaged what she thinks were certain nerves so she would sleep. She says when she awoke the salon employee Sanjay was molesting her.

She complained to the management and was not pleased with the reactions of the hotel general manager, who was slow to meet with her and was callous in his dealings.

The management fired the masseur, and said they blamed the spa, an outsourced company.

The woman then reported the incident to the Women and Child development Minister Kiran Walia and the police who arrested Sanjay.

He denied the molestation charge and the case is to go to court.

The victim has now left for the US where she is studying.

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Jaipur jeweller Govind Narayan Johari 50, has been arrested by Delhi police for selling fake jewellery worth several million rupees.

Police raided Johari's offices and residence and are now investigating the possibility he has duped many people. They say Johari who had the elite of Delhi, Mumbai and Dubai on his client list has been selling fake jewellery allegedly studded with diamonds, emeralds, rubies and sapphires.

His clients that include several Bollywood personalities, are now having their jewellery examined and re-evaluated.

Nine cases of fraud have already been registered in Jaipur and Gwalior against Johari, who is also a buyer of antiques and runs hotels in Bikaner and Jaipur.

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Muscat NRI Mrinalinee Sinha married to Pulkit Bharti, son of a Ghaziabad businessman, was rescued by police from a house where she was supposedly locked up by her in-laws.

Ghaziabad police came under fire from the National Commission for Women however, and it issued a summons to the police chief to explain the delay in arresting the accused inspite of an FIR that was registered in September.

Sinha who met her husband on a social networking site, and came to Ghaziabad from Muscat against the wishes of her parents and married Pulkit, claimed that after their honeymoon, she was raped for months then left to fend for herself in the guesthouse where she was told to stay till her in-laws accept her.

She insisted she go to their home, but the husband went missing and when she eventually did go to the residence her in-laws locked her in the house with no water or power.

Police finally had to rescue her.

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