HYDERABAD (India): After hitting the jackpot, the Rajendra Nagar duo couldn`t resist themselves from having a potluck.

What Mubeen Mohammad and his associate Mohammad Ghouse Pasha, the two masterminds behind the high-profile Nizam Museum theft case, did next was eat like a monarch. With a golden food box encrusted with diamonds and rubies in their kitty, they thought what better way than to enjoy a royal meal.

So they got packaged food from outside, emptied the contents in the Nizam-era ufhn box and savoured the meal before hiding it in a pit close to a dairy farm in Rajendra Nagar.

`The duo has confessed tohaving food twice from the golden box,` Hyderabad commissioner of police Anjani Kumar said at a press conference here on Tuesday, after sleuths cracked the case of theft inside the Nizam Museum at Purani Haveli by producing the pair.

Following some crucial leads, task force sleuths apprehended the suspected thieves Mubeen, 24, a welder, and Pasha, 23,a centring worker at Himayat Sagar on Tuesday.

The pair was back in the city on Monday after they failed to find suitable buyers in Mumbai where they had gone to dispose of the booty.

`All the stolen objects have been recovered intact and will be returned to the museum soon,` the police of ficer said.

The thef t came to light on Sept 3 after the museum staff found the golden tiffin box, a golden spoon, and two cups and saucers belonging to VII Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan missing.

The pair had also set their eyes on lifting a `goldcoated` copy of the Holy Quran and some other valuable items. But they dropped the idea af ter a muezzin at a mosque at Purani Haveli began calling the f aithful to early morning prayers, a police official said.

By arrangement with the Times of India