Bhubaneswar: Vizag police have arrested the two accused in connection with breaking and looting of a Punjab National Bank ATM here. The incident happened October 10, 2020 at the ATM on Patia railway station road under Infocity police limits here. Giving this information Friday, Commissioner of Police Sudhanshu Sarangi said that the two accused have been identified as Samarjyot Singh from Punjab and Zafar Sadiq from Kerala.
“The two are the members of an inter-state robbers gang operated from Bengaluru. The gang used to target ATM kiosks in different parts of the country,” Sarangi told media.
The police commissioner informed that police had examined the CCTV footage of the ATM. They spotted the duo using a gas cutter to break open the ATM and steal more than Rs 28 lakh in cash. They fled from the spot on a motorcycle after committing the crime. Police after checking a number of CCTV footage came to the conclusion that the two accused were from West Bengal.
“They reached Bhubaneswar airport October 5. Then they stayed at a hotel named ‘Pabitra Agency’. During their stay they searched for a gas cylinder on internet. They found that there is a store in Mancheswar belonging to Keshab Maharana which gives gas cylinder on rent. The two hired a gas cylinder from Maharana and also rented motorcycle which they used for the crime,” informed Sarangi.
“The miscreants however, left the hotel they had checked in first. This happened because staff of the hotel became suspicious on seeing them with the gas cylinder. They checked into the ‘Urban Legend’ hotel here then. It was during their stay in the second hotel that the two accused committed the crime,” Sarangi added.
Sarangi also said that the duo threw away the cylinder after committing the crime. Then they checked out from the hotel at 4.15am of October 11. They returned the motorcycle to the owner and left for Delhi via an Indigo flight at 7.40am.
To escape police attention, they constantly changed cities. From Delhi they went to Chandigarh, then Bangalore and finally Vizag. They took flights on each occasion and stayed in reputed hotels. However, they were apprehended by the Vizag police when they were in the process of looting another ATM, informed Sarangi.
After coming to know of the arrests, two special squads of Commissonerate Police went to Andhra Pradesh and interrogated the accused duo. They confessed to looting the PNB ATM here. Commissionerate Police have moved court to bring the accused duo to Odisha.
PNN