MUMBAI: A peon employed in the Mira Road branch of a scheduled bank in Mumbai was arrested for allegedly stealing cash from the bank's ATM last month.
The bank officials had registered a case of theft against an unknown person on February 20 after Rs 1.25 lakh was found missing from the bank's ATM hours after it was refilled by the private agency.
As per procedure, the ATM is put out of service for cash refilling.
The cassettes holding the currency are removed and loaded with notes.
The amount of money loaded is recorded and the ATM is put back into service.
The cash refilled and that withdrawn by customers did not match, alerting the bank officers.
As the machine was not tampered with, bank officers suspected it to be the handiwork of an insider.
The Naya Nagar police examined the closed-circuit television images of the kiosk but found that those using the ATM were masked (due to the Covid pandemic).
A peon from the bank matched images captured on the CCTV.
On questioning, it emerged that the peon had obtained the security code of the ATM machine.
The 33-year-old peon entered the kiosk and used the security code to remove Rs 1.25 lakh from the machine.
Police said that they are not ruling out the possibility of the involvement of more than one person, including staffers from the cash loading agency.
The peon has not revealed how he obtained the security code to unlock the machine. Cops recovered Rs 78,000 of the stolen cash from the peon.
He has been remanded to police custody.