Cash, jewellery of Rs45L vanish from bizman’s bank locker
The valuables in the locker, jointly held by the businessman and his wife, had been kept during the last week of December 2012.
Stashing away your valuables in a bank locker may not be all that secure, after all. Cash and ornaments collectively valued at over Rs45 lakh have been reported missing from a nationalised bank’s locker which had been allocated to a businessman from South Mumbai.
The valuables in the locker, jointly held by the businessman and his wife, had been kept during the last week of December 2012. Recently, when the businessman dropped by in the strongroom, he was aghast to find the locker empty and his treasure gone.
A police complaint has been lodged at Gamdevi police station which has jurisdiction over the area in which the bank is located. The police said that the businessman had requested that his identity not be made public.
An officer of Gamdevi police station said they were baffled because bank lockers cannot be opened without a combination of two sets of keys — one maintained by the customer, the other, a master key which remains in the bank’s possession. “Another hurdle is the fact that CCTV [close-circuit television] cameras are not installed in the locker room due to the privacy policy,” said the officer.
It was on January 15 that the businessman lodged a police complaint after informing the bank’s officials. The crime branch of the city police is conducting a parallel investigation into the case. In January 2011, the crime branch had solved a similar case of theft at a bank in Charni Road in which a gang made impressions of locks and created duplicate keys during a visit to the bank’s locker room.
“But in that case, the lockers had clearly been tampered with. In the present case, there seems to be no such tampering,” said the police officer. “We are going through the bank’s records to find out who had visited the bank before the valuables went missing.”
Sub-inspector A Jadhav of Gamdevi police station said that a case of theft had been registered against an unidentified person.
WhodunnitThe locker was jointly held by the businessman and his wife. The police said the case is baffling as bank lockers can’t be opened without a combination of two sets of keys — one maintained by the customer, the other, a master key which remains in the bank’s possession.