Custodian held for stealing ATM money

A 27-year-old custodian of ATMs of a bank was arrested in New Delhi for allegedly stealing money from the facilities, police said on Wednesday. The accused has been identified as Kamal Kant, a graduate, who was working as a site custodian of ATMs of Corporation Bank.

Three incidents of theft have taken place in ATMs of Nangloi and Tarun Enclave. An amount of Rs 4 lakh and an used car he purchased from stolen money have been recovered.

'The arrest came following investigations into complaints from Corporation Bank,' Sanjay Kumar Jain, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime), said.

Shortage of Rs 1.83 lakh was noticed in ATMs installed at Nangloi in March and another Rs 3.15 lakh were missing from the ATM at Tarun Enclave.

After repeated incidents, a complaint was made by the security advisor of the bank.

During investigations, Jain said, it was found that the seal of the ATMs was not tampered with, which indicated that it may be the work of an insider.

All concerned employees were examined at length, but no clue was found. CCTV recordings of ATM booths have also been obtained and scrutinized.

'Kant was identified as the suspect. He is an employee of CMS Securities. Earlier the job of cash custodian was assigned to him. His duty was to carry cash in sealed condition from vault of CMS to different ATMs,'he said.

'Later the job of site custodian of ATMs was assigned to him. His duty was maintenance and loading of cash in ATMs,' Jain added.

For this purpose a particular lock code and keys of ATMs were provided to him and another code was provided to another site custodian by the company.

'Whenever the ATM was opened both the site custodians have to assemble at that specific ATM and after using both the lock codes and keys the ATM could be opened. Both the site custodians were instructed by the company to keep their lock codes confidential and not to share it with each other,' Jain said.