BENGALURU : A gang of three was arrested on charges of attempting to loot cash from the Ganapathinagar branch of Manappuram Finance near Peenya, north Bengaluru. Preliminary investigation revealed the same gang had made an unsuccessful attempt to steal cash from an ATM machine in April.
During both the attempts, the suspects — Kumar, Nagaraj and Amarish alias Babu Raj Singh — had dressed in women’s nightwear to mislead police.
Kumar, a bus driver, is from Ramanagara, Nagaraj, an autorickshaw driver, is from Tumakuru and Singh, who works at a chicken shop, is from Nepal. All three lived in Rajagopalnagar and Sunkadakatte areas.
CCTV camera turned off
According to police, around 2. 30am on May 26, branch manager Shakuntala received a call from her head office and the vigilance team informed her that the CCTV camera had been turned off at the Ganapathinagar branch. She was asked to rush to the office and check.
Upon reaching office, Shakuntala found some miscreants had broken the lock and cut the rolling shutter. However, they fled the spot after an alarm went off the moment they tried opening the safe.
Cops have recovered two pieces of nightwear, two dupattas, two gloves, one oxygen and one LPG cylinder, an autorickshaw, a bike and an iron rod from the suspects.
“They had all borrowed money from friends and needed to clear their debts and hence hatched plans to loot money from ATMs and financial firms,” an investigating officer said.
