ATM refilling van heist: Driver’s friend arrested, manhunt on for third accomplice

Mumbai: Two days after the driver of the ATM refilling van, who fled with the vehicle and ₹2

Mumbai: Two days after the driver of the ATM refilling van, who fled with the vehicle and ₹2.80 crore cash was arrested, his second accomplice was caught by the Goregaon police. Now, the police have launched a manhunt for the third accomplice in the case.

HT Image

According to police, the arrested accused has been identified as Aakashp Kumar Yadav (32), a mechanic by profession, who has admitted to having played a role in the theft, said Dattatray Thopte, senior police inspector of Goregaon police station.

The officer said Yadav revealed that they were planning the heist for the past two weeks by studying the details of every minute of the van commute to refill ATM centres.

After the driver of the vehicle, Uday Bhan Singh (34) drove off with the van from an ATM kiosk near Patkar College, he signalled Yadav and their third accomplice, both of whom were waiting on the turning towards SV Road, to sit in the van. Singh then took the van to a comparatively secluded corner where they emptied the cash from trunks into gunny bags which they were carrying.

The trio then abandoned the van and travelled in an auto to Dahisar toll plaza with the gunny bags and then took another vehicle to move towards Nalasopara, where they hid along with the cash.

The Goregaon police arrested Singh on Tuesday from one of his friend’s houses in Naigaon in Vasai and recovered a portion of the stolen amount. The Vasai resident was employed with CMS Info Systems, a cash management and payment solutions company, for the past two months.

Police officers said that Pravin Manchekar (36), working as senior custodian with the company, reported the incident to them, revealing that at 10.30am on Sunday they had left the company premises along with cash of ₹3 crore kept in steel trunks.

The van, which also had Manchekar, one of his juniors and a security guard, was driven by Singh. In his statement to the police, Manchekar said after re-filling some machines in Goregaon West, they reached the Union Bank ATM centre near Patkar College where Manchekar and the security guard got off the van and entered the centre along with Manchekar and his junior at 12.30pm.

Manchekar added that when they came out of the centre, they did not find the van and Singh anywhere around. “We thought that Singh must have parked ahead so as not to disrupt the traffic,” said Manchekar. “I called Singh multiple times but did not get any response and therefore called up my senior to ask him to track the vehicle through GPS,” Manchekar said.

His seniors then tracked the van through the GPS location and found it stationary at Piramal Nagar on the stretch leading to the Goregaon Railway station, said a police officer, adding that the employees then alerted the company management who then contacted the Goregaon police.

The police reached the spot and towed the van to the police station where they found that an amount of ₹2.80 crore was missing from the van. The police then started looking for Singh.

After scanning several CCTV recordings, the police reached Naigaon railway station where they saw footage showing Singh getting off a train and eventually found him hiding in the house of his friend. Singh had switched off his mobile phone before he took the money from one of the trunks and fled, added the officer from Goregaon police station.