NEW DELHI: The mystery behind the theft of Rs 55 lakh from the Union Bank of India in Shahdara took less than 24 hours to unravel though the story behind it almost reads like an excerpt from a film script.
The heist took place on Sunday afternoon, when the bank was shut, and was discovered on Monday morning when the staff returned to work after the weekend break.
A police team that reached the crime spot detected a hole in the wall of the bank’s strong room and it seemed the thieves had accessed the vault from the adjacent under-construction building.
Police have arrested two men, the main accused being Hari Ram, a 34-year-old resident of Vishwas Nagar, who is a construction worker, and his abettor being Kalicharan, 39.
The cops have also recovered Rs 54,97,930 of the total looted amount of Rs 55,03,330.
R Sathiyasundaram, DCP (Shahdara), said on Tuesday that during the initial probe, the cops noticed that the CCTV cameras inside the bank had been turned off by the thieves.
“Our teams scanned footage from hundreds of CCTV cameras installed in the vicinity of the bank.
During this exercise, we spotted a suspicious camera, installed in the building adjacent to the bank, that was facing upwards.
It looked like the camera had been tampered with,” said Sathiyasundaram.
“While probing this, we established that only three men could have bad access to the building.
Further, a technical probe revealed that of those three suspects, Hari Ram was present in the building at the time of the theft.” While the cops were investigating the heist, the bank hired some people to repair the wall of the strong room.
Surprisingly, police discovered that Hari Ram was among the labourers working to get the broken wall back in shape.
This meant that even as the police teams were inspecting the scene of crime, Hari Ram was there all the while repairing the wall that he and Kalicharan had breached.
The DCP said Hari Ram told his interrogators that around six months ago he had been called for the renovation of the strong room.
He confessed that during this work, he recced the place and gathered all the information about the cash stored therein and the entry and exit routes.
“Hari Ram further revealed that he had hatched the plan three months ago but could not pull it off due to the lockdown.
He also admitted to gaining access into the under-construction building by replacing the padlock put by the owner,” said Sathiyasundaram.
“After getting in, he drilled a hole into the wall to enter the bank’s strong room.
He and Kalicharan then used a gas cutter to open the vault and made away with the cash.
He claimed that he needed the money for gambling.” The DCP said that at Hari Ram’s instance, police recovered the money that was remaining after he and Kalicharan had spent Rs 5,400.
While Rs 49,200 was recovered from Kalicharan’s possession, the rest was found in Hari Ram’s house.