New Delhi, Aug. 13 -- The government is planning a system to stop the sale of stolen gold jewellery, using a unique six-digit code assigned to each piece, two people directly involved in the process said.

The plan involves tagging a gold jewellery article as 'sold' against its six-digit alphanumeric Hallmark Unique Identification (HUID) number post-sale, making it difficult for jewellers to reuse the same hallmark number on another piece of jewellery, they said.

The 'sold' tagging is a mechanism whereby, if the same HUID code is subsequently entered into the HUID system for another piece, it indicates that the item has already been sold.

This development is significant for the world's largest gold jewellery market with gold jewellery s...