The Sundargarh police on Friday busted an inter-State ATM looter gang and arrested three persons, including the mastermind behind a host of ATM loots in the State, from various places of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
The arrested are suspected to have looted Rs 27,98,700 from SBI ATM at Kuarmunda last month. Similarly, they are also involved in the SBI ATM loots of Rs 18 lakh (Bahalda, Mayurbhanj), Rs 21 lakh (Balichandrapur, Jajpur) and Rs 32 lakh from Tangi in April 2013.
As the looters’ modes operandi was same in all these ATM loot cases, the police were suspecting involvement of a person, who was associated with the SBI ATM operations. Acting on a tip-off, the Sundargarh police with the help of their Bihar’s Gaya counterparts raided mastermind Kundan Pandey’s house in Gaya area on Friday and arrested him. Kundan, an engineer, looks after the maintenance of SBI ATMs on behalf of NCR Company, police sources said.
Basing on Kundan’s statement, the police arrested two of his aides from Fatepur in Uttar Pradesh and seized Rs 3.45 lakh in cash, fixed deposit certificates worth Rs 5 lakh, (Rs 3 lakh of AXIS bank and Rs 2 lakh of HDFC bank) and a Xylo jeep from their possession. The arrested are being brought here for further investigation, the sources said.
It is to be mentioned here that the SBI authorities suspended Kuarmunda SBI branch Cashier Malia Kujur and Accountant Prafulla Nayak after the ATM loot.