Bank manager was mastermind - HT - Ludhiana Live 21 May 2008

Cops crack multi-crore theft case at Muthoot Finance PILLAI PLOTTED THEFT WITH CHILDHOOD FRIEND PUNEET, SON OF CITY INDUSTRIALIST

QUICKLY piecing together parts of the jigsaw puzzle, Ludhiana police today cracked the multi-crore theft case at Muthoot Finance (MF), recovering the entire stolen amount. The culprit turned out to be none other than the company's officiating manager Pillai and his childhood crorepati friend Puneet Aggarwal, son of a rich city industrialist.

Gold worth Rs 2.82 crore and Rs 2.78 lakh in cash were found stolen from MF yesterday morning in what is believed to be the biggest theft in the city in recent times.
Inspector General of Police Sanjiv Kalra told mediapersons at a press conference today that the accused started hatching the conspiracy around a month ago, which is how they managed to outmanoeuvre the modern security gadgets installed at the MF branch at Miller Gung.
The MF has foolproof security and besides the best safety technology employees followed spe , cial practices to ensure that a single employee could not access the lockers by himself.
Following their hunch that the handiwork could only be that of an insider having "friendly access", the police studied the secu rity system at the branch in depth and "that's how they managed to zero in on the accused," said Kalra.

Divulging details, he said though the theft was carried out on Saturday evening, 25-year-old Pillai caused the alarm to ring on Monday morning to mislead the police.
Information has it that alarms installed in the branches go off if the access code is not entered within 30 seconds of opening the locks. As per the safety norms at the bank, two locker keys are kept. "While the custody of one lies with the manager, the deputy manager is the custodian of the other. But on Saturday taking ad , vantage of the deputy manager's confidence in him, Pillai took his keys and returned them a while later, pretending that he had se cured the locker," said Kalra.

At the end of the day when the , staff had left, Pillai and his friend Aggarwal cleaned up all the gold and cash, stuffing the valuables in a blue bag that they took to a hotel room booked under a fake name, said Kalra, adding that interestingly both the accused divid , ed the gold honestly into two bags. While Pillai took it home, Aggar wal hid it in his factory at Focal Point.
Around 7.27 a.m. on Monday to , send the police on a wild goose chase, Pillai opened the main door of the branch without entering the password, making the alarm ring all the way to the Muthoot Finance (MF) headquarters in Gurgoan. The head office immediately called their manager, Pillai, asking him to rush to the branch, revealed the cop.

"Though Pillai was right in the branch, he told the head office that he was near his house and when he arrived at the branch office after 25 minutes, he pretended to have discovered the robbery ," Kalra told mediapersons.