NEW DELHI: Police on Tuesday claimed to have solved one of the most sensational
bank
heists in the capital in recent times with the arrest of three men.
Among those arrested were a security guard employed at a farmhouse in Narela. The police got on his trail after a part of the looted money was deposited into his wife’s account. A search is still on for at least 12 other members of the
gang
. Police suspect that they may have fled to Bangladesh.
On December 18-19, a group of men had drilled a hole through the wall of a bank in outer Delhi’s Mundka and made off with cash and jewellery worth more than a crore by cutting open a safe and at least 15 lockers. The criminals had drilled their way into the bank through the boundary wall of a vacant plot next to it. They pulled out the CCTVs and the digital video recorder. Using electronic cutters powered by at least eight gas cylinders, the men made precision holes to open the safe, which had Rs 27 lakh in cash, and the lockers in the state cooperative bank, barely 100 yards from the Mundka Metro station.
The entire operation lasted at least 10 hours.
Investigations revealed that equipment used by the gang to break into the bank was purchased from a shop in Moti Nagar. A part of the stolen gold was melted and sold off in north Delhi. Police said the crooks were inspired by a movie they had recently watched.
DCP (outer) M N Tiwari said two of the gang members who were arrested were identified as
Raj Kumar Joshi
and Vikas Thapa. The third person to be taken into custody was Ramesh, a jeweller, who bought gold worth Rs 60,000 from the crooks and turned them into biscuits.
“A team led by inspector (special staff) Sukhbir Malik was formed to track down the criminals based on some vital clues, including the cylinder that they had left behind. We are still trying to track down other members of the gang,” DCP Tiwari said.
Police found that the cylinder that they had fitted with the gas cutter had the markings of a filling station. After tracking down the suppliers, they visited more than 300 shops before zeroing in on the Moti Bagh outlet in south Delhi.
Joshi and Thapa were identified from the CCTV footage at the shop. The men were tracked down after Joshi deposited Rs 60,000 into his wife’s account in a bank in Narela.
The duo told the police that they carried out the heist after conducting a three-day recce of the area. They chose the particular branch because they found that there were no security guards over the weekend. Also, the empty plot didn’t have any CCTV cover.
Police said that, on the first day, it took the thieves nearly three hours to break through the wall that led to the vault. Shockingly, no one from the bank got a whiff of the break-in for nearly two days. Police said that some bank employees were also being questioned.
So far, gold worth Rs 4.86 lakh has been recovered. Joshi told police that he was working as guard at
Sanjay Colony
in Narela during the night and operated an e-rickshaw by the day. Thapa worked at a mobile phone-repair shop.
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