Pramesh S Jain
With the arrest of nine people including a police constable involved in the ATM van robbery case,the city police have made a total 98.6 per cent recovery of ₹ 7.1 crore out of ₹7.11 crore robbed near Jayanagar 1st Block,Ashoka Pillar,close to Lalbagh Siddapura Gate under Siddapura police limits in broad day light on November 19.
City police Commissioner,Seemant Kumar Singh, appreciated the team work for cracking the case and awarded certificate of appreciation to all the 200 police personnel involved in the operation.
The accused have been taken into custody and further investigations are on to recover the rest of the money from them,he said .
It was a meticulous well planned robbery executed badly, one of the officer part of the operation,said.While there are many challenged faced by the police the most challenging was the arrest of trio who had hired a cab to Hyderabad and used the mobile number of the cab driver to misguide the police.
The accused identified as Rakesh,brother of one of the mastermind Ravi,and his two associate,Naveen and Nelson used mobile phones borrowed from cab driver and shop keepers to contact their family members in the city .
Though the police identified the accused and began to track them down through the call record details,they intercepted the cab driver at the outskirt of Hyderabad based on the CDR verification.
It was a race against the time for the police who drove private vehicle to give a hot chase to the accused to Hyderabad.
Based on the information given by the cab driver , the police reached a lodge where the accused had stayed within a hour,but by then the accused had checked out .
Meanwhile the accused went to a roadside juice centre for a refreshment and borrowed the phone of a juice shop owner to make a call to their parents .
The police got a tip off from the technical team in the city who are tracking the movements of the accused and rushed to the juice centre with the help of local police .
But by then the accused had left and the juice centre owner confirmed the presence of trio and told the police that they had borrowed his phone to make a call .
The police based on his information dispersed in different directions to continue tracking the accused before nabbing them at the Napalli metro station in Hyderabad city.
The accused confessed to the police that they came to know about the arrest of their associates and decided to return to the city and even had purchased bus tickets to Bengaluru.
However before boarding the bus,the police team track them down and recovered a total of ₹54.7 lakh which they had carried in their backpack.
Lunch time:Gross Negligence of staff is being probed:
The driver,cash custodian and the two security guards who were detained by the accused and later released before fleeing away with the cash,is also being probed and necessary action will be taken,Mr.Singh said .
The staff who are hired from different agencies for the driver and security staff and cash custodian had informed their immediate seniors before alerting the control room.
While the CMS office staff began probing and trying to track down the vehicle and carrying out their SOP,they failed to inform the police,which they supposed to do it on top priority,Mr.Singh said.
Meanwhile the staff instead of calling the police control room decided to have lunch as it was a lunch break for them,Mr. Singh said adding that this negligence led to delay in informing police for about 1.5 hours late .
The probe is to ascertain it was only due to negligence or ignorant act or a deliberate attempt to delay,he added.
The police also pointed out series of violations of the RBI guidelines on every step the staff was outsources and there was no SOP and basic training top the staff o how to handle any eventuality,no background checks before hiring staff,which is mandatory.
The security personnel though armed failed to use the fire arms or failed to understand the situation and act accordingly after they were confronted by the gang.The security personnel were physically unfit and lack training another police officer,added .
Prime accused also involved in murder case :
One of the prime accused Ravi,son of former army man and owner of a travel agency,arrested by the police revealed during the questioning that he was involved in a murder case of a rowdy-sheeter reported in Varthur police station limits in May 2018 .
He was absconding since then and the police failed to track him down until he was arrested by Siddapura police for the ATM van robbery case.
Ravi,according to the police was part of the rival gang which hacked 33-year-old Challa Kumar on the night of May 17 at Kodathi Gate.
The prime accused Nagaraj had professional rivalry with Challa kumar who was a rowdy-sheeter in Banaswadi having over half a dozen of criminal cases.
The accused persuaded Challa’s associate Ballary to switch over to their camp and instigated him to kill his boss.
They learnt that Challa would often travel in his SUV to Rayasandra near Parappana Agrahara to meet his second wife.
The gang got Ballary to secretly fix a GPS device in Challa’s SUV and started monitoring the latter’s movements on mobile phone.
Armed with real-time information,Nagaraj and his gang reportedly intercepted Challa’s SUV near Kodathi Gate and hacked him to death with machetes.
While the police arrested all the six accused Ravi who is part of the murder plan,execution and also providing logistics to the accused was not arrested .
