Mysuru: The Second Additional District and Sessions Court yesterday convicted seven persons accused of looting Rs. 70 lakh from the office of an agency that supplied cash from banks to ATMs. The quantum of punishment will be announced on Dec. 2. One among the accused is already dead.

The accused looted the office of G4S Security Services located right behind Metagalli Police Station and a complaint was registered there later.

Suresh, Gopal, Praveen, Jagdish, Manukumar, Prabhakar and Srinivas, were involved in the robbery committed on Aug. 2, 2008. A seven-member gang had attacked the office, tied gunman Suresh and assaulted another personnel Vinod.

Both Suresh and Vinod were suspected and Suresh was not injured much. He had not even used the loaded gun to resist robbery. The cash chest had been opened with duplicate keys and hence the Police strongly doubted Suresh. During interrogation, he spilled the beans.

The cash was found in Gopal’s house. However, Gopal died of heart attack as soon as the Police found the cash. H.D. Anand Kumar was the Public Prosecutor in the case.

CASE BACKGROUND

According to the complaint filed by Vinod, who was on security duty at the office along with gunman Suresh, a gang of seven men robbed them after gagging and tying up both of them around midnight. Vinod said it happened at around 12.45 am.

They heard someone knocking on the door. As he opened the door, seven Hindi-speaking men, aged between 25 and 35 years and wielding machetes, barged in.

They gagged Suresh and took him to the bathroom where he was tied with ropes. Then they gagged Vinod and tied  him to the staircase. He suffered injuries on his hands, legs and arms as they attacked him with machetes.

The gang had disconnected power supply and also the connection to the alarm. They damaged cameras in the strong room and entered it after breaking open the outer wooden door and later the steel door. After breaking open the locker, they took away two cash boxes containing the cash.

The agency was entrusted with the responsibility of providing security to branches of ICICI Bank and Bank of Baroda in the city and replenishing their ATMs. Its local in-charge Prithvi had brought Rs. 50 lakh from the ICICI Bank Branch on     Kalidasa Road at 4 pm on Saturday (Aug. 2) along with cash custodian Charles, and kept the cash in the locker which already contained cash of Rs. 20 lakh. Suresh and Vinod reported for duty at around 7 pm according to Nagaraj, supervisor of the agency.

Nagaraj told the Police that he spoke to Suresh and Vinod at about 12.10 am over the mobile phone. His next call was at 3 am, but they did not respond. That was when he rushed to the office, only to find the duo all tied up.

Vinod and Suresh said that the robbers took away their mobile phones too. Investigating the case, the Police found many loose ends in the robbery theory and intense grilling made the accused to confess.