Ghaziabad: Burglars looted Punjab National Bank’s Modinagar branch by drilling a 2-foot hole over some past days in bank’s strongroom. They entered through the opening they had made and looted 30 lockers. The exact worth of items is not yet known but it’s believed to worth crores.
Located on NH-58, the branch is adjacent to a plot on which sits an abandoned rubber factory. There is an empty office right behind the bank’s strongroom with a common wall. Robbers entered this office and cut the hole in the nine inches thick common wall at a height just above where the lockers end.
The burglary was discovered around 9:45 am on Monday when a bank official, Anil Bhargav, and the head cashier, Ajay Kumar, opened the strongroom which has two security doors, reports TOI.
The strongroom has a steel door which unlocks with a set of two keys. These keys when inserted together can only open the door.
“After opening the steel door, the officials were about to open the next door which is an iron grille like those found in prisons. However, they noticed through the grille that things had been scattered inside the strongroom. They also noticed that several lockers seemed to have been broken. They immediately called up the police control room,” assistant general manager S K Pancholi told TOI.
“The strongroom had been closed on Friday around 6pm. The bank was closed for two days after that. A security alarm is also installed inside the strongroom apart from a CCTV camera. Even if the alarm went off, there was no one to hear it since the bank was closed. There was no security guard at the branch. The branch depended on police patrol vehicles for security,” added Pancholi.