Maha heist buff pulls off bank job, nearly gets away

Watching popular web shows and films such as Money Heist, Speed, and Mission Impossible recently was an urgent mandate for cops who needed to get into the mind of a criminal who had pulled off a bank heist, and was a fan of such thrillers.

: In the midst of the rough and tumble of police duty, men in khaki at Manpada police station, in Dombivili (a suburb, 43km from Mumbai), were asked to watch popular web shows and films such as Money Heist, Speed, and Mission Impossible recently. It was an urgent mandate for cops who needed to get into the mind of a criminal who had pulled off a bank heist, and was a fan of such thrillers.

Maha heist buff pulls off bank job, nearly gets away (Satyabrata Tripathy/HT file photo)

After conventional methods to nab the man behind the ₹12 crore heist at the ICICI Bank in Dombivli in July failed, police learned from the bank employees that the accused was fan of heist movies. Having arrived at a dead end, the senior police inspector of the station created the must-watch list for his officers for 10 days.

The team finally cracked the case and arrested the accused on Monday, after two-and-a-half months.

The accused, Altaf Shaikh (43), spent a year planning the heist, studying the loopholes in the system, and gathering tools to pull it off.

An official from the Manpada police station said, “For over a month, we tried to find any link which leads us to the accused. He had no criminal record and worked at the same bank for 11 years.”

Shaikh held three private jobs before joining this bank; and employees were happy with him. Cops kept a close eye on his family members, and tracked his Amazon and other e-commerce activity to understand his spending. It led them nowhere.

They then learnt about his love for heist movies and decided to walk that line. We started to understand how he planned the entire heist by enlarging the AC duct to pass the cash to garbage chute and tampering with the CCTV footage. He was using a burqa to hide while on the run. He also learnt to change his looks, said the officer.

Shaikh earned ₹25,000 per month, while his wife also drew an equivalent salary; the couple have a daughter and lived with Shaikh’s mother. All was well with the couple until, a couple of years ago, his older and younger sisters got divorced and came to live with them along with their children. Suddenly, they had over 10-12 people to look after. Shaikh was in dire need of money to fulfil his family’s needs.

The prep

Shaikh, who was a custodian manager of cash, observed how cash was transported to the vault, when the extra cash was transported, and how many times it was inspected.

He first bought a flat in his sister’s name in Taloja (on Mumbai-Pune highway) over a year ago to store all the equipment he acquired for the theft. He also used this space for research -- stolen videos of the vault and other areas of the bank were stored here. He studied them to hatch the perfect plan. The house was also supposed to be used for storing the stolen cash.

Shaikh then started looking for space where the money could be hidden. The bank’s air conditioning seldom required repairs, and since Shaikh was charged with overseeing the maintenance as well, he decided to use the duct for passing the money through the chute, as the vault was next to this duct.

The duct was 10 inches wide. He cut the metal sheet to widen it by five to six inches, and took videos of the vault when it was empty. He knew that some of the CCTVs were defunct while the alarm system was faulty and could be deactivated. The security guards were positioned only at the front of the bank, the back of the bank was not guarded. He also managed to get the login details of his superior.

The heist

mahaSo, on July 16, 2022, when employees had left, he logged into the CCTV cameras, paused them, pasted the footage of the empty vault and kept it on for some time so the guard watching the monitor would believe that the vault was actually empty.

He also deactivated the alarm. The vault was opened with two keys which were supposed to be used at the same time. Since he was the custodian manager, he made spare keys.

After deactivating the alarm and sabotaging the CCTV, he then opened the vault and transferred the cash to the duct and below to the chute. His plan was never to flee – only to gradually siphon off more cash. It was Saturday and the bank’s inspection was not scheduled for over a month from then. However, on Monday, the bank realised that the security money was missing, as were the DVR of CCTVs, which prompted them to call their inspection team, said an officer.

This was a jolt for Shaikh, who hurriedly took as much cash as he could (around ₹12 crore out of the 34 crore he had thrown into the duct), called his three friends -- co-accused Abrar Qureshi, 33, Ahmed Khan, 33 and Anuj Giri, 30 -- who got a tempo and put over ₹5.8 crore in it while he fled with nearly ₹3 crore.

Initially Shaikh had not planned on involving Qureshi, Khan and Giri at all – all he sought to do was remove the cash in instalments. The inspection on Monday however threw a spanner in his works, and he hurriedly called his three childhood friends to help him. Qureshi owns a garage; Khan, a tempo driver, used his vehicle to carry the stolen cash; and Giri is also a driver.

Money Heist gave him the idea to change looks and use burqa when needed. He saw an isolated building in Airoli and decided to store a major chunk of the booty there. A homeless man spotted him and the money was then used by drug abusers and the homeless who splurged on bar dancers and luxury goods. We studied hours of CCTV footage and traced his movements to hotels in Solapur, Pune and Kolhapur. He was finally nabbed from Kolhapur on Monday,” said the officer cited above.

Senior police inspector S Bagade, from Manpada PS, said, We nabbed him with the hard discs of the videos of the bank vaults and all the background research he had done to plan the heist. We have enough evidence to nail him, however we are still trying to recover the money, we have recovered ₹8 crore and in the next few days the remaining cash will be recovered.

Shaikh’s sister Nilofer, 35, who was abreast of his movement when he was on the run, hid some cash in her home and was booked as co-accused.