BENGALURU: THE Whitefield police on Tuesday questioned the manager and the custodian of lockers at HDFC Bank’s Brooke Fields branch after a customer alleged that valuables kept in his locker, including two Omega watches and a one kg gold bar, went missing.
Shantharam, a resident of Whitefield, had filed a case alleging that the valuables kept in the bank’s locker had gone missing from November 22.
A senior police officer said, “We questioned the manager Nagaraj Reddy and a woman custodian of Brooke Fields branch and have taken their statement. Shantharam claimed that he had visited the bank in March 2015 and his valuables were safe in the locker. But when he visited recently, he was shocked as the valuables were missing. He alleged that the locker was intact but the valuables were missing.
“The investigation is on and we are suspecting the involvement of the complainant as well as the bank staff. We are also examining CCTV footage to ascertain the facts,” the officer added.
‘Bank cooperating
with police’
Neeraj Jha, head, Corporate Communication, HDFC Bank Ltd, stated in a release, “We are ourselves at a loss to understand as to how this could have happened, given our stringent processes and security protocol for operating a locker.
“The bank has no knowledge of the locker’s content as the customer operates it privately and independently without the presence of the bank staff in normal circumstances. The agreement between lessor (bank) and lessee (customer) clearly specifies this and also that the lessor (bank) is there to only facilitate the customer’s access to the locker. We also did internal investigation and it doesn’t seem to suggest any breach of the above either. We have given all evidence including CCTV footage to the police as part of the investigation and the bank will always co-operate.”