On Sunday (June 19), ATMs of two nationalised banks from Kalyan were looted and cash worth Rs 27.68 lakh was stolen from them. Soon after knowing about the incident, the Kolsewadi police suspected that the accused are from Haryana and that a gang of 3-4 robbers were operational in Maharashtra.
Kolsewadi police station senior police inspector Bashir Shaikh informed, "We have formed six teams to arrest the Haryana gang. The modus operandi of the gang is that they spray the CCTV camera inside the ATMs with white paint and used gas cutters to tax the entire cash box with them."
Shaikh added, "While investigating the case, we came to know that a gang of three robbers from Haryana initiated robberies six months ago from Sangli, Solapur, Osmanabad and later moved towards Raigad, Satara, Pune and Thane districts and their next target could be Palghar and Mumbai. Police from other parts of Maharashtra are also in search of this gang."
The Sunday robbery of ATM kiosks of Bank of India took at around 2:49 am. A shop owner near the ATM who came to know about the robbery in ATMs informed both the police and the bank officials.
Shaikh added, "The six teams formed by us analysed the robbery patterns and it is the same as before. Their pattern includes spraying the CCTV with white paints, using gas cutters, breaking patterns of the cash box and fleeing with the cash boxes; these were similar to the operations carried out in the other six districts of Maharashtra in the last six months. However, all the thefts are under investigation. There is no breakthrough yet. The positive point is that we have found CCTV footage of one of the accused who went inside the ATM but did not use his card, he just did a recce of the ATM and went back. We are using the footage to trace the accused and foil their next robbery plans."
Kalyan region assistant commissioner of police Umesh Mane Patil said, "We are suspecting the Haryana gang which is active in the robbery of ATMs in other parts of Maharashtra for the Kalyan ATMs' robbery. The same gang looted in Solapur one and half months back and the Solapur police team is also tracking this group. The gang robs over a gap of 3 to 4 weeks in a different area everytime. As of now, more information cannot be revealed because the investigation is underway."
Shaikh said we have registered a case of theft under sections 380, 427 and 34 against unidentified persons.
