How a gang of burglars cleaned out 30 lockers at a Navi Mumbai bank

The police have arrested eleven people -- including two women -- from Mumbai, Allahabad and Kolkata for breaking into a Bank of Baroda branch and looting valuables

Twenty-five days after a gang of burglars looted 30 lockers in Bank of Baroda’s Sanpada branch, the police claim to have solved the crime.

A gang of burglars looted 30 lockers in Bank of Baroda’s Sanpada branch in Navi Mumbai. (Bachchan Kumar/HT photo)

So far, the police have arrested eleven people, including two women, from Mumbai, Allahabad and Kolkata, among others. The main accused in the case is one Hajid Ali Mirja Baig.

The police said on November 11, the gang entered the bank’s locker room by digging a 30-foot tunnel from a shop nearby, which was taken on rent by the gang in May using fake documents.

They stole valuables worth Rs3.43 crore from the lockers over that weekend (November 11 and 12), when the bank was closed. The police have recovered valuables worth Rs1.49 crore so far. They recovered 5.5kg gold, Rs12.19 lakh in cash, four vehicles and some foreign currency. “It is still not clear who had kept the foreign currency in the lockers,” said a police officer.

Four people, who played key roles in the crime, are yet to be arrested, the police said.

Hemant Nagrale, police commissioner of Navi Mumbai, said, “Baig had spent Rs8.5 lakh organising this crime and arranging different tools and instruments. The gang used walkie-talkies to coordinate.”

“The gang was inspired by a similar heist in Haryana, wherein a bank was looted in October, 2014, by digging a tunnel. They had watched the video online and applied the same techniques in this crime,” Nagrale said.