Four unidentified miscreants looted 688 packets of gold jewellery worth Rs 5 crore and cash of Rs 12,800 from the Odisha Gramya Bank’s Darpanarayanpur branch on Tuesday. The manager and cashier of the bank were injured in the incident, sources said. The masked assailants held the bank employees hostage and decamped with the gold packets at gunpoint, they added. Earlier, in July this year, robbers had struck the same bank’s campus at Narangarh in Khurda district and looted 700 packets of gold jewellery after hurling a bomb inside the bank.
The miscreants resorted to blank firing and snatched away all the gold jewellery packets at gunpoint from the testing table. They created terror inside and asked customers to give away jewelleries and cash. They too compelled the bank branch manager to open the strong room by brandishing a revolver and looted over 700 packets of gold jewellery and cash of Rs 11 lakh from the treasury. A week after the incident, the police arrested seven dacoits of a gang in connection with the robbery.