Post News Network
Sundargarh, Sept 24: In a broad daylight robbery, miscreants barged into the Indian Bank premises at Mission Road here and decamped with cash Rs 15 lakh and gold ornaments Thursday.
The miscreants also beat up a customer, the branch manager and other employees before locking them up in the strongroom.
Superintendent of police (SP) R Prakash, Sadar sub-divisional police
officer (SDPO) Prashant Mohanty and Town police IIC Pradip Kumar Jena reached the spot and started an investigation. A forensic squad was also pressed into service. Police launched a manhunt to nab the accused but failed to trace them till this report was filed.
The incident occurred during the peak business hours when customers were at the counter for transaction. According to an eyewitness, Tanmaya Purohit, five youths armed with revolvers barged into the premises at about 2 pm. One of them slapped him and asked for the strongroom keys brandishing a gun.
They let him off only after he told them that he was not a bank employee. The miscreants then caught bank manager Jashinta Kerketta and three other employees asking them to hand over the strongroom keys. The ruffians even assaulted them at gunpoint. Kerketta tried to trick them by telling them that another employee having the keys had gone out for lunch.
However, the looters refused to listen and beat up Kerketta, cashier Pankaj Kumar Mahananda, clerk Udaya Panigrahi and peon Gangadhar Kuanr. They even shoved a gun into Kerketta’s mouth and asked her to open the strongroom. Panicked, she opened the strongroom following which the miscreants looted the cash and ornaments. The looters broke the CCTV cameras in the bank and fled with the hard drive in a Mahindra Bolero.
Kerketta said the branch, which has been here in operation for over four years, has only seven employees. While one of them was on leave Thursday, four of them were looking after customers. The rest had gone out for lunch. The dacoits, all in their twenties, were conversing in Hindi while one was speaking in Oriya. The branch has no armed security guard.
