ROURKELA: In a daring daylight bank heist, armed miscreants looted about `42 lakh from Rourkela branch of Indian Overseas Bank (IOB) on Tuesday.The unidentified miscreants, armed with firearms, arrived at the bank located on the first floor of a building in busy Madhusudan Marg under Plant Site police limits at about 9.50 am.
They barged into the branch as there was no security personnel at the entrance and held the bank employees hostage before decamping with the amount.Chief Manager of the branch Sanjay Kumar Jha said seven to eight armed miscreants came to the bank and started thrashing the employees including him to terrorise them. “They made the customers kneel at a corner of the building. They forcibly took the keys of the strong room and looted about `42 lakh within half-an-hour before fleeing,” he said.
Jha said while one of the miscreants was wearing helmet, faces of others were visible. The bank employees could not protest as the miscreants overpowered them.Rourkela SP Dr Uma Shankar Dash said it was a well-planned heist as the dacoits took away the Digital Video Recorder (DVR) of CCTV cameras while leaving.
“All escape routes of the city have been sealed and an alert has been sounded. Police officials of neighbouring police stations have been informed about the dacoity. We are verifying the details to get a lead on the miscreants,” he said.
Asked if the criminals were local or from adjacent Jharkhand, the SP said investigation is on to get whereabouts of the dacoits and whether there is any link with other heists reported in the recent past.
The miscreants also snatched a gold chain from a woman bank employee. DIG of Police (Western Range) Kabita Jalan visited the branch to take stock of the situation.
Reports said the miscreants had held small firearms while one of them was reportedly having a carbine. It is suspected that the man wearing helmet could be the local conduit of the gang.Incidentally, six armed miscreants had looted mortgaged gold worth around ` three crore and some cash from the office of the Gold Finance Division of the Indian Infoline Finance Ltd in the same locality at about 4 pm on July 8, 2016. They had also fled with DVR of the surveillance cameras in a similar fashion.
BoB employees looted
Rourkela: Three unidentified miscreants on Tuesday looted about ` four lakh from two employees of the Kacharu branch of Bank of Baroda (BoB) after intercepting their motorcycle near Pasra Ghat of Koel river in Kuanrmunda block under Birmitrapur police limits in Sundargarh district. The bank employees, Sujit Ekka and Prabin Tigga, were carrying the cash from the BoB’s main branch at Sector-19. To reach Kacharu, they crossed Koel river and were intercepted by the miscreants near Pasara Ghat. Besides the cash, their personal belongings were looted at gun-point.