Rs5 million robbed in year’s second bank heist

Six armed robbers took away Rs5 million cash from a private bank branch near NIPA Chowrangi on Thursday in this year’s second reported bank heist.

Gulshan-e-Iqbal Division Superintendent of Police (SP) Ghulam Murtaza Bhutto told The News that six armed robbers entered the bank at 1:53pm. According to video collected from closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras installed inside and outside the bank, one of the robbers first handcuffed the security guard standing outside and dragged him inside.

Then, one by one, five of his accomplices entered the branch. One of them ran towards the security guard standing in a bunker inside the bank and snatched his weapon. Bhutto said the armed men stayed inside the bank for three minutes only and collected Rs5 million cash from the counters, filled it in two bags and left at 1:56pm.

The way the robbers overpowered the bank’s guard suggests that they had carefully monitored their positions in their earlier visits to the branch, he said. He added the robbers did not even wear any masks and all of them had beards. They arrived at the bank in a Suzuki pick-p and escaped in the same.

Further investigation is under way. The first bank heist of the year was reported on January 8 in which the security guard and his accomplices made off with gold jewellery worth millions of rupees after breaking into 25 lockers of a private bank’s branch in Golimar.

The toll last year

Eight banks were robbed in the city last year. On January 19, 2017, half a dozen robbers stormed into a private bank’s branch at Punjab Chowrangi and took away more than Rs1.2 million.

On April 18, six armed robbers stormed a private bank branch in Gulshan-e-Iqbal and escaped with Rs1.2 million. Just a day after, two security guards of a bank looted Rs12 million from the company’s cash van in the jurisdiction of Boat Basin police station when it was heading towards another branch in Clifton after collecting cash from other branches.

Similarly, on May 11, armed robbers took away Rs7.2 million from a private bank branch situated at North Nazimabad. In another heist on May 17, nearly half a dozen armed robbers stormed into a private bank on Mauripur Road and made off with around Rs3.4 million.

On July 21, a group of twelve robbers took away Rs3 million from a bank at Mochi Morr, Gulshan-e-Iqbal, while on August 1, robbers escaped with Rs0.6 million after robbing a bank on Napier Road. The eighth heist of 2017 was reported from a bank on Shahrah-e-Quaideen on August 8.