Two held in ATM robbery case in Saharsa

PATNA: Police on Wednesday arrested two persons for stealing Rs 9.7 lakh from the ATM kiosk of Canara Bank at Tiranga Chowk under the Sadra police station area on late Tuesday evening in Saharsa.
The arrested accused were identified as Dilip Kumar, a native of Supaul district and Lallu of Baijnathpur in Sahrasa. Police also recovered Rs 7.62 lakh from their possesion. The arrested duo were employees of a private company which was outsourced by the Canara Bank to upload the money and for security of the ATM.
The incident came to light when the bank’s branch manager Amit Kumar Singh found that the ATM was short of cash. The bank officials checked the transactions and found out that only Rs 2 lakh were withdrawn by the customers and the rest were missing. Based on this, a complaint was registered with the Saharsa sadar police station area.
Saharsa sadar police station SHO Raj Mani told this newspaper on Wednesday that Dilip and Lallu had loaded Rs10 lakh in the ATM kiosk around 4pm on Tuesday and they stole the money around 7.30pm, the same day.
“The way, the crime was committed shows that the accused knew a lot about machine security. There was no outbreak. They simply opened the ATM machine and decamped with the money. They have the duplicate key of the ATM as they regularly load money in the machine,” Mani said.
He added, “As soon as Dilip and Lallu entered the ATM kiosk, they covered the CCTV cameras installed inside with a paper. We identified the accused through the CCTV footage.”
Police are investigating the matter to nab other people who are associated with this crime. “We believe that there are more people involved in this ATM robbery and trying to recover the remaining amount of Rs 1.9 lakh,” the SHO said.