HYDERABAD: Cyberabad police on Monday arrested a person, who was involved in theft of Rs 15 lakh cash, which was meant to be deposited in City Bank ATM located at Inorbit Mall, Madhapur area a few days ago. Police also recovered Rs 14.70 lakh cash including mobile phones from the accused.
Bonaparte Prabhakar (27), an ATM custodian, was working for Writer Safe Guard Pvt Ltd and is a resident of Banjara Hills. The firm maintains ATMs of several public and private banks. They collect bulk cash from banks and load the same in their ATMs in the state. The entire process is carried out by dividing the area into several routes with 15 to 20 ATMs. For every such route they appoint two of their employees as cash custodians.
“Prabhakar has studied upto BCom through correspondence and is said to be addicted to alcohol. Recently, he had begun to work for Writer Safe Guard and was teamed up with one Karunakar. Together, they were in-charge of 18 ATMs in Madhapur IT Park area. Everyday, they used to collect cash from their office at Balanagar and load it in different ATMs,” police said.
Prabhakar soon developed greed for the cash. On March 27, the duo, along with a security guard, collected `15 lakh from the company office to load the same in Ilabs ATM and Gayathri Manohar ATM. They were also supposed to collect the end of the day reports from the City Bank ATM at Inorbit Mall.
Police said that when Karunakar went inside the complex, Prabhakar remained in the vehicle saying that he had some reports to prepare. After a few minutes, he opened the trunk box with his keys, took the entire amount and made the guard believe he was going to load the cash in the ATM. But after entering Inorbit mall, he escaped throught the other exit.
Taking the cash he caught an auto to Kacheguda, stayed for one day at Sri Krishna Inn and purchased two mobile phones costing `20,000 from the stolen amount.
Later in the evening of March 28 he left for Visakhapatnam, where he spent money lavishly for four days. Madhapur police have arrested him and the accused has confessed to the theft. Police have recovered Rs 14.5 lakh and two cell phones from him.