Two more held for bank heist, car used to carry booty recovered

CHENNAI: Two more suspects were arrested on Friday in connection with the

bank heist

case, in which lockers were cut open and 130 sovereigns of gold jewellery worth Rs 40 lakh were looted by a gang from the

Indian Overseas Bank

(IOB) branch in

Virugambakkam

on Monday.

Two car drivers- Bahadur, 35, and Pratap, 32, were arrested and a

Toyota Innova

, used to transport the accused and the booty, was seized from them. Police said efforts are on to get custody of seven suspects, including Shabi Lal, in Nepal. The other suspects- Dev Singh, Bheemlal, Kudusingh, Thej Bahadur and Ganesh, who are in Nepal now, were already arrested in Nepal for involvement in a few criminal cases registered in Delhi and Nepal.

The Nepal police on Thursday arrested the prime suspect of the heist, security guard, Shabi Lal. He was arrested after the city police sought the help of Interpol through the CBI. However, the Nepal police refused to hand over Shabi Lal, since there was no extradition treaty between India and Nepal to transfer suspects involved in criminal cases.

Chennai police nabbed the two car drivers after CCTV camera footage showed the duo driving in the car, carrying cylinders. Police had also learnt that the suspects had used an Innova bearing a Karnataka registration to escape after the crime, which led them to the duo, said an investigating officer.

The two confessed to the police that Shabi Lal, who had worked in Chennai and Tiruvallur for the last 15 years in various companies as a security guard and maintenance staff, was behind the crime. He had hatched the plan for the heist and took the gang’s help, police said.