NEW DELHI: Police on Friday morning arrested the driver of a Delhi cash transit van who had allegedly stolen Rs 22.5 crores on Thursday in what was one of the biggest heists the capital city has seen.
The driver Pradeep Shukla, 35, allegedly ran away with the money at around 5:45pm on Thursday, in Delhi’s Govindpuri area. He was arrested in Okhla.
On Thursday, an armed guard accompanying the cash transit van – that had been used to pick up cash from an Axis bank branch — asked the driver to stop the vehicle near Govindpuri Metro station so he could relieve himself. Shukla told the guard that he would wait for him in a lane nearby but he drove away instead.
The guard, Vinay Patel, informed his boss at the security agency and the police were notified.
Bank officials said they had sent four cash transit vans — with a total amount of around Rs 38 crores — from their Vikaspuri branch during the day on Thursday. One of the vans (DL 1LK 9189) was the stolen one that had around Rs 22.5 crores.
Personnel from at least two subdivisions of Delhi Police’s southeast district were roped in along with a specialised crime team and the cash van was soon recovered from a spot near where the driver had run away from the the guard.
Senior police officials maintained that this was not a case of robbery, but of criminal breach of trust. Scores of pickets and police checkpoints were set up across the city and checking of vehicles was intensified at the borders to track down the driver.
Police said that this was likely the biggest cash heist in Delhi after the January 2014 gunpoint robbery of Rs 7.69 crores from a businessman at the BRT corridor near Moolchand flyover.
Bureau Report
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