Four men break into ATM in Najafgarh, make off with ₹6.4 lakh

Four unidentified men with their faces muffled and heads covered broke into the ATM booth of a nationalised bank in Mitraon village near Najafgarh in south-west Delhi, cut open the cash dispensing machine and decamped with the cash unit containing ₹6

Four unidentified men with their faces muffled and heads covered broke into the ATM booth of a nationalised bank in Mitraon village near Najafgarh in south-west Delhi, cut open the cash dispensing machine and decamped with the cash unit containing ₹6.40 lakh in the early hours of Friday, police said. The ATM kiosk was unmanned as no security guard was found deployed there at the time of the theft.

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This is the second such ATM theft reported in Delhi in the past 37 days. On June 15, a similar theft of ₹20 lakh by four men was reported from a kiosk in upscale Satya Niketan in south Delhi. The police believe both thefts to be the handiwork of the same people, as the modus operandi and the number of people who the hit kiosk in both incidents are the same. They are suspecting the role of any Mewat-based gang that is mostly involved in such crimes.

“We have registered a case at Baba Haridas Nagar police station in connection with Friday’s ATM theft. Several teams have been formed to identify and nab the suspects. Criminals from Mewat region are our prime suspects,” said deputy commissioner of police (Dwarka) Harsha Verdhan Mandava.

DCP Mandava said the theft came to fore on Friday morning after someone alerted the police station. A police team reached the spot and ascertained that the theft took place around 4.30am. The police checked the CCTV cameras and found that four men with their faces masked and heads covered arrived in a car.

“The suspects blackened the CCTV camera inside the booth before cutting open the ATM with a gas cutter. They took away the cash trays and the cash. The bank told us that ₹6.40 lakh was stolen. No guard was there at the booth at night,” added the DCP.

In April, the special cell of the Delhi Police had arrested three members of a Mewat-based gang, after a brief gun-fight, including its kingpin Imran alias Imma, and that gang was mostly involved in uprooting ATMs in Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR). The gang had uprooted a nationalised bank ATM after breaking the iron shutter of the outlet in south Delhi’s Badarpur on March 31. They took away the cash dispensing machine containing around ₹34 lakh, the police said.