Cash van driver in Bengaluru heist arrested

Dominic Selvaraj, the van driver of a logistics firm who drove away with Rs 1.37 crore in cash from a Bengaluru bank, was arrested here, police said on Tuesday.

Selvaraj was caught at K.R. Puram when he returned from Salem in Tamil Nadu and alighted from a bus, Deputy Commissioner of Police N.M. Anucheth told IANS here.

"We were tracking his movements after his wife (Evelyn) surrendered on Sunday night with around Rs 79 lakh of the booty," the officer said.

A court remanded Selvaraj for five days till December 3 and Evelyn for three days in police custody for interrogation.

Selvaraj abandoned the cash van in a residential area in the city with Rs 45 lakh cash and a rifle of the security guard on November 23.

At night, he left Bengaluru with his wife and their 12-year-old son in a bus to Vellore in Tamil Nadu with Rs 92 lakh cash in a shoulder bag.

The next day, the couple and their son went from Vellore to Chennai and then to Coimbatore by train, CCTV footage showed.

They went to Chalakudy near Thrissur in Kerala in a bus and travelled to Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh on November 24-25 before returning to Bengaluru on Sunday, Anucheth said.

"On the advice of her relatives and a lawyer, Evelyn surrendered to police and handed over a bag containing Rs 79 lakh in bundles of Rs 2,000 and Rs 100 notes," said the officer.

Preliminary investigation revealed that though the couple had planned to lay their hands on the cash before escaping to Dubai where Evelyn works as a domestic help, they did not know how to handle the money.

They were on the run after police gave a look-out notice to all airports and shared their pictures with police stations across the country.

"We will find out if Selvaraj has a crime record and also Evelyn's role as they seem to be amateurish in dealing with so much of hard cash," added Anucheth.

With Rs 1.24 crore of the cash recovered, including Rs 45 lakh from the abandoned van, police will probe what the couple did with the remaining Rs 13 lakh. Selvaraj had only a few thousand rupees when he was arrested.

Selvaraj drove away the cash van from K.G Road when two employees of Logi-Cash Solutions Ltd, which handles cash for banks, went into the Bank of India branch. The security guard went to relieve himself.

The logistics agency recently hired Dominic on contract to drive the van for collecting cash from banks and depositing them in their ATMs across the city.

--IANS

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