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Technical experts and officials of Commissionerate Police were left in quandary after unidentified miscreants reportedly decamped with an automated teller machine (ATM) of the State Bank of India (SBI) containing around Rs 20-25 lakh cash from Indira Colony near Sisupalgarh area in Bhubaneswar.
The machine was later found vandalised and dumped at an isolated place nearby Housing Board Chhak on Tuesday. All the cash was missing when police arrived at the spot, sources said.
Preliminary investigation revealed that the miscreants used a stolen vehicle to transport the ATM from the SBI kiosk. The vehicle belonging to a nursery was stolen last night by the criminals involved in the loot of the ATM. The matter came to light after some passersby found the ATM missing this morning.
It is suspected that the robbers committed the crime late on Monday night. It is first of its kind incident in which miscreants have uprooted the entire ATM in Bhubaneswar. Similar crimes have been reported in other States like Rajasthan in the recent past.
In 2018, unidentified miscreants had uprooted an ATM from Tulasipur area under town police limits in Khurda district.
In the recent incident in Bhubaneswar, the miscreants were successful in decamping with the ATM after dismantling some iron rods and disabling its network and ransacking CCTV cameras at the kiosk. It is suspected that some inter-state criminal gangs might be involved in looting of cash after uprooting the ATM itself. However, the involvement of some ex-staff cannot be ruled out at this point.
Manoranjan Tripathy, technical expert said, “The miscreants had first disabled the network, snapped the CCTV camera connection for which our team suspected that the machine could be down due to network issues. We had informed our team last night and we found the ATM missing this morning.”
Bhubaneswar ACP, Anirudh Routray said, “We will extensively rely on technical and other scientific analysis to crack the case as it is a different type of crime altogether. It is certain that the miscreants who are involved in this are technically sound."
According to Routray, the stolen vehicle used in the ATM loot has been recovered within 2 to 3 km radius of the crime spot.
“Four teams along with cyber officials are working on the case. We suspect the involvement of three persons in the ATM loot case as ascertained from the CCTV footage," Routray added.
