Superintendent of Police L. Subbarayudu disclosing the details of the case before the media in Tirupati on Tuesday.
| Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
The Tirupati police have cracked the sensational ATM theft case reported recently at Chandragiri. They arrested the accused cash custodian and his accomplice.
The theft was reported at an ATM in a prime locality on the Chandragiri main road on August 30, following which the Superintendent of Police L. Subbarayudu visited the spot and interacted with the probing team.
It was found that the cash custodian Kongarla Suresh Babu (37), in connivance with driver C. Manoj Kumar and Budala Manoj, had planned to steal the cash and flee in a four-wheeler. On August 23, while loading cash, Suresh Babu allegedly deliberately kept the ATM machine unlocked.
The police said that, as per plan, the accused visited the ATM again on August 30, stole the cash, and fled the spot. The police arrested Suresh Babu and Manoj Kumar at a hotel near Gadanki and recovered โน5.38 lakh worth of cash from their possession.
The police squarely blamed the bank and the agency vested with the responsibility of maintaining and filling cash in ATMs for negligence, as no alarm system was installed in the machine.
The prime accused, Suresh Kumar, worked for the agency that maintains as many as 52 ATMs across Tirupati and stole money in small quantities from many other ATMs to avoid getting caught, said the police.
The SP announced a meeting would soon be held with the bankers to urge them to guard their ATM outlets by appointing security guards and installing CC cameras to prevent the recurrence of such incidents.
