Two individuals, including a service manager with the State Bank of India, have been arrested by the Bhandup police for being involved in the theft of 4 kg gold jewellery worth around 3 crores from the said bank’s locker.
According to the first information report (FIR) registered at the Bhandup police station on Feb 28, by Amit Kumar, who works as a branch manager at SBI’s Mulund Branch, the primary accused Manoj Maruti Mhaske and he works at the personal banking branch, which mainly provides gold loans to the customers.
Matter first surfaced on Feb 27
The matter first surfaced on Feb 27 when Mhaske was on leave, and Kumar was provided with the duty and custody of the branch’s gold locker. In the evening, Kumar said that he noticed some of the gold jewellery packets had gone missing. “Till Feb 26, around 63 gold loans were ongoing, and hence there should be 63 gold jewellery packets inside the locker, but there were only 4 of them, 59 missing,” said Kumar in his statement to the police.
Kumar immediately called Mhaske to check with him, and to his surprise, Mhaske confessed about “taking away the gold temporarily” which was kept from October 2023 to Feb 26. Mhaske assured Kumar that he would return the gold within a week. Kumar later informed his seniors, and they calculated the missing gold jewellery packets, which turned out to be worth over Rs. 3 crores.
Mhaske assured to return money
Mhaske was called to the branch and he showed up and assured them to return the gold in some time. Subsequently, they approached the police and registered a case. Later on, Mhaske was arrested by the police and they initiated the process of recovering the gold jewellery. Mhaske, a Malad’s Raheja Township resident, has been charged with criminal breach of trust by a banker under section 409 of the Indian Penal Code.
After Mhaske’s arrest, he was remanded to police custody by the court for further interrogation. During the interrogation, he told the police that he handed over the stolen gold jewellery to a ‘friend’ named Fareed Shaikh, who resides in the Antop Hill area. On Sunday, police officials confirmed that Shaikh was arrested for selling the stolen gold jewellery to another person. There has been no recovery yet, however, the process for the same is currently on. Both Shaikh and Mhaske are currently in police custody.
