Swallowed gem turns out fake

Published on 12/09/2012 00:00

A JEWEL apparently swallowed by a visitor to a diamond exhibition has turned out to be a fake, prompting police to continue searching for a missing gem worth £8,000.

Police arrested Chou Wan, 32, a Chinese national, after a stallholder said he had swallowed a 1.5 carat diamond at the show in Colombo, Sri Lanka, last week.

Chou was X-rayed and given a laxative so the stone could be recovered. It proved to be a fake, leading officers to believe he passed the real gem to a male accomplice, swallowing the fake to mislead eyewitnesses. The second man, also thought to be Chinese, is now being hunted.