Gujarat: Rs 29 lakh stolen from ATM in Kadodara

SURAT: Kadodara GIDC police filed a complaint against unidentified people on Monday for damaging an automatic teller machine (ATM) of State Bank of India (SBI) and stealing Rs 29.28 lakh. The theft was carried out at around 12.13 pm on July 30 but the complaint was registered on the third day after the incident.
Before decamping with the loot, thieves sprinkled some material on the machine, CCTV cameras and air conditioners in the kiosk that damaged the electronic products. Police claimed that the ATM is managed by a contract firm and they alerted police late.
The complaint was lodged by Dhaval Chauhan, an employee of a company that manages the ATMs for the nationalized bank. In his complaint, Chauhan claimed that he was informed about the theft by employees of a cash management agency who had gone to load cash at the kiosk located in Tatithaiya village on Kadodara Bardoli Road.
Preliminary investigation revealed that the ATM was cut open using a gas cutter. The tray in which cash is placed was missing. The theft, however, did not come to anyone’s knowledge till July 31. “There was no security guard or working alarm in the ATM booth. No CCTV monitoring as well due to which after so many hours police was alerted,” said a police officer in Kadodara police station.
Police are to submit a report to the bank about the loopholes in the security and are examining CCTV footage recovered from the area. It is yet not clear how many people are involved in the theft. It is also a matter of investigation that no one in the area came to know about the theft as it takes more than an hour to cut open the ATM.