With increasing number of cases of ATM loot happening in several places, especially in the plain districts, senior cops are sounding worried. The fact that members of a notorious gang based in Jharkhand have been recently trained on how to withdraw money after hacking the ATMs seems to have sent chill down the spines of the police top brass.
SSP STF Dr Sadanand Date said that a team from Cyber Cell Police Station has been deployed in Roorkee to understand the modus operandi behind the ATM loot case. Two miscreants who were arrested on Sunday in collection with loot of around 37 lakh from five SBI’s ATM machines in Roorkee by the gang members are being questioned to get details of the gang involved. The chief of the gang–Amit, native of New Delhi, is still absconding.
In course of interrogation, both the accused revealed that Amit used to reach ATMs with software in pan-drive and give them a secrete pin-code and directed them to loot the ATMs. Two courageous youths in Roorkee had caught these two criminals while they were looting the ATM on Sunday, police said.
In course of interrogation, the accused revealed that they had got trained on cyber crimes in Jamtara district of Jharkhand after paying around Rs1 lakh as tuition fee. They said that some highly qualified persons -BTech holders- had also got trained to earn quick money.
Roorkee CO Kuldeep Aswal said such incidents are happening principally because of the bank officials sleeping over the slew of instructions police have given them to strengthen security. SBI officers were informed soon after the incident, but their engineer had reached Roorkee on Monday evening to inspect the ATM and probe how the loot had been possible.
In an earlier case, around five unidentified persons had uprooted an ATM machine of ICICI bank in SIDCUl, Rudrapur in Udham Singh Nagar and decamped with the machine that contained cash of around Rs7.5 lakh. It happened on the night June 24 when the security guard was off the scene for ‘personal reasons’. Probe found that the screws used to ground the machine were loose. This is why the robbers had the least difficulty to uproot it and flee with it.
However, police have arrested three out of 11 persons involved in it and recovered the ATM machine on Sunday based on the information they gave. In course of interrogation, the criminals revealed that they had earlier looted around nine ATM machines at various places in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand this year. The same modus operandi surfaced during the investigation.
In two separate incidents in Patelnagar, Dehradun earlier, police found that the bank officials had left the keys in the cash chests after they had deposited cash in them.
State director general of police BS Sidhu expressed disappointment with increasing number of ATM loot cases. He said that district police officers have been directed to meet the bank officials from time to time to ensure that CCTV cameras and video cameras are installed inside and outside the ATMs.
The police officers were directed to tell the bank officials to put the ATM at safer places. He further stressed on the antecedents of the guards deputed at banks and ATMs be checked. Police instructions regarding security of banks and ATMs include cashes be transported in vans under the escort of armed guards and the bank officials informing the local police post or police station concerned when they refill ATMs with cashes, he added.