Cuttack: Police Commissioner Sudhanshu Sarangi on Tuesday said that the sensational day-light dacoity at private finance company, IIFL in Naya Sarak area of Cuttack, was an insider’s job.
Sarangi who spoke to reporters following the arrest of four of the accused involved in the dacoity, said that the mastermind of the crime was Lala Amrit Ray, an employee at the company.
“Lala had planned the loot with the help of one of his college friends, identified as Ranjan Behera alias Bapu,” Sarangi said.
He said the police have recovered around 2 kilograms of gold ornaments following the arrest of Lala and his three associates, including his college friend Bapu.
On November 19, four miscreants who came on a couple of motorcycles had stormed into the IIFL office at Naya Sarak. They took away gold ornaments and cash estimated to be worth over Rs 12 crore from the locker of the private finance company before making good their escape.
Sarangi said that the loot was possible on account of the poor security measures at the office of which the miscreants took full advantage.
“There were several loopholes in the security measures at the company which did not bother to even verify the antecedents of its staff before appointing them,” said Sarangi.
Giving further details, Sarangi said Amrit had siphoned off some gold ornaments during his five-year stint with IIFL. Fearing that his misdeeds would be exposed following the appointment of a new auditor recently, Amrit hatched a plan with his friend to loot cash and gold ornaments from the company before he was caught, said Sarangi.
Amrit’s elder brother was earlier arrested on charges of embezzling gold ornaments from another finance company, under the Mangalabag police limits, where the latter worked.
Though Amrit’s name had also surfaced in that case, he had managed to evade arrest by obtaining an anticipatory bail from a court.
On the fateful day, the masked miscreants had also taken away mobile phones of the employees and locked them in a room in order to prevent them from informing police.
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During investigation, the Commissionerate Police found that the security sirens and CCTV cameras at the office were dysfunctional since the past several months.
“No video footage was available with the branch’s head office in Mumbai as the CCTV in Cuttack branch was defunct. The lone security guard was absent from duty for the past several days and no steps were taken to repair the alarm system which would have cost them less than Rs 200 to 300,” said Sarangi.
A senior police official informed that all the procedures including opening of the digital locker through OTP mechanism was also not being followed by the company.
Though the police have recovered around 2 kgs of gold ornaments, investigations have revealed that the accused have kept a part of the loot in another finance company. “Only after proper audits we will be in a position to ascertain how much gold ornaments was actually looted,” Sarangi added.