illions looted from bank as security guard caught napping

Karachi 

The private security deployed at a bank was literally caught napping on Tuesday as yet another daylight robbery, this time in Soldier Bazaar worth Rs5.4 million, was carried out with relative ease as bandits disarmed guards while they slept on their chairs during banking hours. 

Police said they had been informed of a robbery near the Patel Para Chowk of Soldier Bazaar on Tuesday afternoon. When a team of the law enforcers reached the spot, they found that four armed men had robbed the Soneri Bank branch of over five million rupees. 

Investigations revealed that the robbers barged into the branch and immediately disarmed the security guard. They then proceeded to the cash counter and forced the cashier at gunpoint to open the vault. 

The robbers collected the cash bags and subsequently fled from the scene of the crime. The entire deed took between eight and ten minutes. But unlike robberies in the recent past, the bandits failed to get their hands on the CCTV footage. A case was then registered on the complaint of the bank robber, Kashif Chaudhry. 

SSP Raja Umer Khattab of the Crime Investigation Agency (CIA) said the negligence of the security guards allowed the robbers to loot the bank easily. He revealed that the guards were taking a nap on their chairs, which made it easy for the robbers to snatch their weapons. 

The relative ease with which the recent spate of robberies has been carried out raises question marks over the effectiveness of law enforcement agencies and even private security companies to prevent these heists worth millions of rupees. On this occasion, the private security was asleep on the job, while in a separate robbery that took place last month, the weapon provided to the guard was not in working condition. 

In the majority of robberies this year, which numbered 21 in total, the private security guards on duty have been disarmed with relative ease, instilling a sense of insecurity among bank customers and staff. 

THREE BANK ROBBERS HELD: With bank heists occurring at an alarming rate, law enforcement agencies have stepped up their efforts to take such criminals to task. On Tuesday, the Crime Investigation Agency (CIA) claimed to have arrested three bank robbers when they sent a team to Kohat in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Among those arrested was one of the gang leaders and the CIA also said it recovered arms and ammunition as well as money looted from banks. 

SSP Raja Umer Khattab said that the CIA were investigating recent bank heists and had formed teams for this purpose under the supervision of DSPs Bahauddin Babar and Abdul Sattar Abro. The law enforcers were tipped off that certain members of the gang were hiding in the Kohat region of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. He then directed his teams to travel to Kohat and arrest the suspects. 

The CIA teams set off for Kohat and based on the directions given by the informant, conducted a raid in a particular area of the region and managed to arrest a suspect named Gulab Shah. The detainee was subsequently brought back to Karachi. 

The SSP said that upon being thoroughly interrogated, the suspect disclosed that the gang consists of between eight and 10 members. He also revealed that the ring leader, along with other gang members, was hiding in the Kati Pahari area of the city. Based on this information, the CIA conducted another raid and following a brief encounter, took gang leader Kamran and Sher Khan into custody. 

Information extracted from these suspects led helped the police recover a looted amount of Rs827,000. The law enforcers also seized property worth Rs4.5 million that had been purchased by the bandits using money stolen from banks. Three TT pistols, the same number of repeaters, a 9mm pistol and a vehicle were also recovered during this raid. 

The detained suspects were moved to the investigation unit for further interrogation. It was found that some of the weapons recovered matched those that had been snatched from security guards in previous robberies, while Gulaab Shah and Kamran were wanted in more than 10 cases. 

The accused disclosed that they had been previously arrested by the police and sent to jail. However, while they were incarcerated, the bandits had a chance to regroup and reorganise their gang. When the suspects were bailed out, they hid out in the Kati Pahari area and planned future heists. 

The accused confessed to looting seven banks this year, including the UBL Bank branch at Metroville on July 26. In Rizvia they robbed Faisal Bank on October25 and the North Nazimabad branch of HBL on October 6. 

Other heists this year included the HBL branch in the Sharea Fasial police on October 19, Askari Bank in Gulshan, Habib Metropolitan Bank in Aziz Bhatti and HBL bank in Soldier Bazaar. The bandits used Hi-roof vans and Suzuki cars for their robberies and after committing the offence, flee back to theirs native towns in Parachinar and Kohat. 

Gulaab Shah also confessed to looting Rs4.1 million from a money changer in 2008. It was also discovered that Karman alias Kami attempted to kidnap a young girl from the SITE-A area. However, when her brother Bashir Khan resisted, the suspects shot him dead and fled from the scene. Kamran was also said to be involved in the murder of Balochistan Minister Rustam Jamali, who was killed in the Sharea Faisal area. 

The previous leader of the gang of the group, a man named Nasir, was arrested by the police in 2005 and jailed. However, when he supposedly fell ill in 2007, he was shifted to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre for treatment. There he managed to escape after murdering a policeman who had been deployed to keep watch over him. 

The remaining members of the gang include Nasir Hussain, Latif Afridi, Irfan Afridi, Hassan Jaan, Babar Hussain, Karimullah and Iqbal alias Moota, who are hiding in Parachinaar, Kohat and Darra Adamkhel, SSP Khattab said, adding that teams had been formed to raid the areas and capture the remaining suspects. 


Source:http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=82119&Cat=4&dt=12/14/2011