Updated
New Delhi, Nov 27 (HT): The driver of a cash van who disappeared transporting Rs 22.5 crore in hard cash for refilling AXIS Bank ATMs across south-east Delhi was arrested early on Friday.
Delhi Police recovered the cash from his possession. An amount of Rs 11,000 was said to be missing, sources said.
A hunt was launched after SIS, the private security agency hired by Axis Bank to transport cash, rang up police control room around 5.30pm on Thursday to inform that one of its drivers fled with a Mahindra pick-up van stashed with money on the way from Vikaspuri to Okhla.
The driver, Pradeep Shukla, is from Uttar Pradesh and had joined the agency recently.
According to police, Shukla left the van near a petrol pump in Okhla and then hid in a warehouse.
Shukla took the metal box with cash along in the godown and slept off while police teams suspected he had fled to his hometown in UP.
Shukla reportedly switched off his phone so that his location could not be traced through technical surveillance.
Police traced the van fitted with a GPS tracker system near the Okhla industrial area.
Shukla had left the bank’s Vikaspuri office along with armed guard Vinay Patel around 3.30pm.
When they reached Captain Gaur Marg near Govindpuri around 5pm, Patel asked the driver to stop as he wanted to go to the washroom.
As he got down, Shukla told him that he would keep driving and return because parking the vehicle there might cause a traffic jam. “Patel said the van never came back and he called the bank after waiting 10-15 minutes,” an officer said.
Axis Bank assured that the cash was “fully insured” and “neither the bank nor the customer would get affected”. It said the van didn’t belong to the bank and the driver was not its employee.
Earlier Report
Driver of ATM cash van flees with Rs 22.5 crore in Delhi
New Delhi, Nov 27 (Agencies) : In one of the biggest cash thefts reported in Delhi, the driver of a cash transit van allegedly fled with around Rs 22.5 crore from Govindpuri area oon Thursday.
The incident was reported in the evening when the armed guard accompanying the van asked the driver to stop the vehicle near Govindpuri Metro station so that he could relieve himself by the roadside, said police.
The driver, identified as Pradeep Shukla, told the guard that he would wait for him in a lane nearby and was last seen taking a sharp turn. When the guard returned, the vehicle and the driver were nowhere to be seen, said police.
The guard, Vinay Patel, informed the matter to the branch concerned of the private bank whose cash they were carrying and bank authorities immediately called up police.
They told police that they had sent four cash transit vans - with total cash of around Rs 38 crore - from their Vikaspuri branch in the day, and the van (DL 1LK 9189) which headed towards southeast Delhi was carrying around Rs 22.5 crore, PTI reported.
However, the final evaluation of the heist would be possible only after the accused is nabbed, police said.
Personnel from at least two subdivisions of Delhi Police's southeast district were roped in along with a specialised crime team and the cash van was soon recovered from near a petrol pump close to the spot where the accused driver had deserted the guard.
However, the boxes containing the cash were missing, said police.
Senior police officials who rushed to the spot after the incident was reported maintained that this was not a case of robbery but criminal breach of trust.
Scores of pickets and police check points were set up across the city and checking was intensified at the borders to track down the accused, said police.
CCTV grabs have been obtained from nearby premises while eyewitnesses are being examined and several teams have been put on the case, police added.
Police said that this could be the biggest cash heist in Delhi after the January 2014 gunpoint robbery of Rs 7.69 crore from a businessman at BRT corridor near Moolchand flyover.