Odisha: Former employee stays overnight inside bank to loot 1.6 kg gold worth Rs 1 crore, arrested

A former employee of a bank managed to sneak inside the premises and stay overnight to loot 1.6 kg of gold ornaments from the locker before leaving the bank the next morning.

The incident took place at the State Bank of India’s Laxmipur branch in Odisha’s Koraput district.

The accused, identified as Sekhar Kuldip, a contractual employee of the bank, was working as a messenger of SBI Laxmipur between 2014 and August 2020. He was earlier removed from the messenger service over misconduct.

Although the theft of the gold ornaments from the bank locker occurred in November 2021, a formal complaint in connection with the incident was registered on January 14 by the Branch Manager after a customer informed him about missing ornaments from his locker.

Following this, on Friday, the manager filed a complaint with police that gold jewellery weighing around 1.6 kg had been stolen from the bank’s locker.

Koraput Police started an investigation into the incident by examining the CCTV footage of the bank.

During the investigation, police found something suspicious about the bank’s former employee, Sekhar Kuldip. It was revealed that, even after being sacked, he was a regular visitor to the bank. However, he had stopped visiting the bank for the last 1.5 months.

Koraput SP Varun Guntupalli said Kuldip entered the bank on November 30 afternoon on the pretext of some work and somehow managed to hide on the premises overnight.

“He then hid himself in the computer server room of the bank. Unaware of Kuldip’s presence in the bank’s room, the bank employees locked the gates at 8 pm after banking hours. At night, Kuldip came out of the hideout and well aware of the whereabouts of the keys, went straight to the branch manager’s room to get the strong room and locker keys. He then took away the gold jewellery kept in 21 packets in the strong room and locker and again hid inside the bank’s toilet. He managed to sneak out after the bank opened for regular transactions at around 10 am the next day,” said the SP.

Notably, as Sekhar was aware of every location inside the bank, he managed to gain access to the keys of the strong room and iron chest and robbed the locker in a clean way.

Sekhar was arrested from his native Bikrampur village under Narayanpatna police limits and he subsequently confessed to his crime.

Police have seized the stolen gold ornaments. Apart from that, police have also seized Rs 2.95 lakh cash and household articles worth over Rs 1.1 lakh. Moreover, in December, he invested around Rs 4 lakh for the construction of a building in the Laxmipur area. Police officials are in the process of seizing the building too.

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