BENGALURU: In a case of fence eating the crop, an armed guard of a State Bank of India (SBI) branch on Residency Road allegedly stole Rs 12.7 lakh from its strongroom recently.
After spending most of the money betting on horse races, the guard dialled the bank’s official, confessed to his crime and threatened to commit suicide. Ashoknagar police have arrested the accused — Clement Paul (47), a resident of Ramaswamypalya of Lingarajapuram in east Bengaluru and retired naik of the Indian Army – under IPC section 381 (servant theft).
During interrogation, Paul confessed to having spent most of the stolen money on horse races and lent Rs 40,000 to one of his friends. Not a single rupee was found on his person at the time of the arrest, police said.
According to a complaint filed by Umashankar Singh, chief manager of the branch, Paul called up the deputy general manager of the branch on Monday morning and confessed to having stolen the money.
Paul also told him that he was going to kill himself inside the bank. The DGM, however, managed to convince Paul not to take any extreme steps. When a group of officials questioned him, Paul told them that he had stolen the money on the night of Feb 23. Two officials would be in charge of the locker which requires two keys to operate. While closing the branch on Feb 23, they had given the locker keys to Paul and asked him to lock it.
Paul went into the strongroom but walked out without locking it. Paul went into the strongroom late in the night and allegedly stole the money. He also destroyed the hard disk of the CCTV cameras and disposed of it elsewhere. He left the bank premises the next day around 7 am.
He spent the money betting on horse races held at Bengaluru Turf Club on Feb 24 and also on races held in Mumbai on Sunday.
