TIRUCHY: Burglars looted a BHEL Employees Cooperative Bank and decamped with Rs 1.43 crores on Thursday night. The loss was found in the morning on Friday.
This is the third burglary case in 2 weeks. The police had recently busted Punjab National Bank and Lalithaa Jewelry cases.
When the employees entered the bank on Friday, they found an empty suitcase which had Rs 1.43 crore in it. A windowpane in the bank building was also seen removed.
Soon, Tiruchy SP Ziaul Haque along with forensics experts with sniffer dogs arrived at the spot after the cops at BHEL station were alerted.
According to sources, Rs 1.51 crore in cash was brought to BHEL cooperative bank from a private bank on Thursday morning. Such things are done on the last working day of every month for dispensing salary and other expenditures. Out of the Rs 1.51, only Rs 8 lakh was kept in the cashier's cupboard draw. The rest was left in a suitcase and kept in a room. Apparently, the suitcase did not have any protection.
Haque told TNIE that the chest room facility in the bank was not used to store the cash. "Employees told us that the lock was jammed and couldn't be opened the previous night. Considering the premises safe, they had left the suitcase near the cashier's cabin," he said.
When the police accessed the CCTV footage, they found a person with gloves and a knitted face mask entering the bank through the window at 7.58 pm. In less than seven minutes, the footage showed, the person emptied the cash in the suitcase into his bag, and leaving the place.
The camera outside the bank showed the person arriving and leaving in a two-wheeler.
This modus operandi shows how a single person executed this burglary in just 10 minutes.
There were five employees in the bank. The SP said that few suspects were being questioned and expressed hope that the case would soon be solved.
Meanwhile, BHEL's recognised union LPF condemned the security lapse and asked if the bank can be trusted by the account holders after the incident.