05 March,2009 03:44 PM IST | | Vinod Kumar Menon
Thane Police Commissioner has instructed his men to carry out security review of all banks in the entire commissionerate - the action is a result of a day light dacoity in Union Bank of India, Dombivili branch on Tuesday.
The lethargic attitude of the bank has irked the police chief Anil Dhere, he said, "It is ridiculous that the bank employees (in this case) did notu00a0have the presence of mind to press the burglar alarm and even worse, the bank did not have a lathi welding security guards."
Police statistics reveal that this is the first case of bank robbery in the last one and half years in the Thane police commissionerate.
Inorder to minimise such incidents, the police had recently conducted an informative program with security experts and gadgets manufactures, to educate bankers, jewelry outlets and financial institutions on usage of such devices in crime prevention but such drills do not seem to be effective without public initiative, explained the police chief.
Three young men in early twenties barged into the bank armed with revolver and knife at 3.25 pm. The men spoke in English and Hindi threatened the five bank staffers including two women and a courier boy.
They escaped with Rs 5.94 lakhs and pulled the shutter down before escaping.
A senior bank official attached to the branch said, " the staffu00a0were terrified and feared for the worst, hence they did not dare to press the alarm button."
Preliminary inquires reveal that the accused might have done a study of the bank before executing the operation.
The police have made sketch of the suspects, said senior inspector S A Divekar of Manpada police station.
Dhere added, "I have instructed senior police officers to review the security situations in Manpada area and will provide additional police staff if needed to ensure round the clock police patrolling."u00a0
The crime branch is doing a parallel investigation in the case. According to Additional Commissioner of police (crime) Prashant Burde "We are working on some clue and are likely to detect the case soon."
Last year till date around 137 cases of robbery were registered of which 118 were detected and out of 20 cases of dacoities registered 15 were detected.u00a0u00a0
Not a single bank robbery / dacoity were reported during the period.
Bank response
D S Tripathi (Field General Manager, Mumbai Zone) admits security lacuna at the said branch.u00a0
"We do provide security guards at most of our branches and more than 10 percent of branches do not have security guards and this branch was one of them. The branch was functional from March 2008 and was in the process of hiring security guards for them," he said.
The said branch has 3000 customers and the entire savings are completely insured. The daily receipts and payments for the branch are around Rs 6 lakh.
By nextu00a0year the bank management has decided to upgrade security systems in 102 branches (Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai) by providing armed security guards, installing CCTV cameras etc.
