Audacity of crime caught Delhi Police totally by surprise

NEW DELHI: Friday's bank robbery is not good news for Delhi Police. For at least a decade, none had dared target a bank in this manner.
The cops are apprehensive that the successful day-time heist may have removed the fear of potential robbers of being nabbed on the bank premises by the customers and employees or of being surrounded by police alerted via secret alarms.

The cops were able to recall only two bank-related crimes in the past few years, both burglaries carried out in at night. In the first incident in August last year, three thieves managed to sneak into Syndicate Bank in Mukherjee Nagar through the window.

Taking advantage of the weekend closure, the men managed to hack the window grilles to enter the building. They made away with Rs 2.3 lakh worth of coins in 46 polythene bags.

The cops, however, did not have to pursue the intruders for long and nabbed them within 48 hours.

In the second incident on December 22, 2017, the three men involved dug a tunnel to the Cooperative Bank in outer Delhi's Mundka from a vacant adjacent plot. Armed with gas cutters and cylinders, they drilled a hole in the wall, entered the building one by one and disabled the CCTV cameras and the security alarm.

The trio took away the CCTV footage recorders along with around Rs 30 lakh in cash and some jewellery having broken into at least 15 lockers. The cops arrested the three men after a month of investigation.

Rather than break-ins of this sort, robbing of cash vans has been more common in the city these last five years or so.

The criminals take advantage of the fact that cash companies often ferry large amounts of money to and from banks without providing police with prior information. In April this year, for instance, robbers shot dead two and fled with Rs 12 lakh from a cash van. Some incidents have involved the employees of the cash replenishment firms. They were caught stealing cash while refilling ATMs.

However, an armed robbery was an unheard of for a lengthy period. For a city that is under constant terror threat, Friday's incident can set a precedent and encourage criminals and terrorists to execute similar capers to fund their gang and illegal activities.

The Delhi Police brass has asked joint commissioners and deputy commissioners to take steps in this regard and conduct meetings with bank officials to sensitise them about the security measures that need to be taken to avert robberies.