Bengaluru: The police have arrested five persons for allegedly stealing more than four kgs of gold from Muthoot Mini Finance office at Mariyappanapalya in Kumbalgodu police station limits. The incident took place on October 20.
The police have identified the arrested persons as Suresh Chandra (33) from Mandya, Mohammed Junaid (42) from Banashankari in Bengaluru, K.R. Manjunath (38) from Tumakuru, Umesh (31) from Mandya and Prasanna Shetty from Udupi.
According to police the gang had purchased purchased police uniforms and a country-made pistol along with 15 rounds of ammunition from Majestic. They had visited the area several times before committing the crime.
The police said the arrested persons are pre-university drop-outs and working in various marketing firms. They selected Muthoot Mini Finance office at Mariyappanapalya since it would be easy to escape since it is on the outskirts of Bengaluru. On the night of October 20, they donned ‘police uniforms’ and confronted the manager Nagendrappa, while he was heading home after work.
According to the police, the gang members got Nagendrappa inside their car on the pretext of an inquiry and drove to the outskirts. They tortured him for the secret number of the locker, police said. The gang returned to the firm along with Nagendrappa in the early hours. They threatened the security at gunpoint before picking up 4,329 grams of gold and Rs 1.18 lakh. They took away CCTV cameras and the recorder to avoid being identified.
A special team traced the car using CCTV footage from in and around the area. The police zeroed in on them on Friday. They have recovered gold worth Rs 1.5 crore, an air pistol with 15 rounds of ammunition, two cars, three bikes, 10 mobile phones, police uniforms and a machine used to melt gold from them.
