Baripada , The Odisha Police have arrested two persons involved in the looting of a bank in Mayurbhanj district, a senior officer said on Tuesday.
Briefing reporters here, Mayurbhanj Superintendent of Police Varun Guntupalli said that on February 20, around 10.15 am, five unidentified persons with firearms and knives entered the bank branch at Bahalda by covering their faces with helmets and masks.
They looted ₹20 lakh in cash at gunpoint and also assaulted the branch manager and other staffers. They took bank staffers and customers hostage and confined them to the strong room and locked the main gate of the bank from outside, before fleeing, he said.
They also damaged the hard disc, where the CCTV footage was stored, Guntupalli said.
It was ascertained that the culprits escaped to Jharkhand through Badanarayani village in Tiring police station area. A knife and black sunglasses of the culprits were seized from the roadside in the village, the SP said.
“To crack the case, we formed three teams. During the investigation, we found that a similar case was reported earlier in Baripada town. But at that time, the miscreants had failed to loot money,” he said.
From the CCTV footage of the Baripada case, the police teams checked with different police stations of Jharkhand and Central Jail, Ghagidihi, Jamshedpur and identified two suspects, identified as Pappu alias Rajeev Ranjan and Santosh alias Pramod Bind , both from Bihar, he added.
The SP further said that the photographs of the suspected persons were shown to the villagers, who identified Rajeev Ranjan. With the assistance of the Special Task Force of Patna, the Odisha Police team apprehended the two accused from Patna.
The police were able to recover ₹14 lakh in cash from the rented house of accused Pappu and ₹1.19 lakh from Santosh. The investigation of the case is underway and further follow-up action will be taken to nab the other accused persons, he added.
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