Valuables worth Rs 2.5 crore go missing from Kanpur bank locker

At least nine customers of the Central Bank of India Karachikhana branch here have found valuables worth crores of rupees missing from their lockers, police said on Friday.

The cases were reported with the Pheel-Khana Police and several people, including some bank employees of the branch, have been detained for interrogation, Deputy Commissioner of Police (East), Pramod Kumar said.

Three FIRs have been filed in the matter so far, he said.

The theft came to light on March 14, when Manju Bhattacharya, one of the customers, checked her locker but found her valuables missing.

Sita Gupta, another patron of the bank, reported the same happening with her.

When the news appeared in local newspapers, other customers rushed to the bank, of whom seven since Tuesday have reported theft of their valuables from the lockers, Kumar said.

The total cost of valuables is estimated to be over Rs 2.5 crore, with each customer reporting losing about Rs 30 lakh in valuables from their lockers, the DCP said.

In its turn, the bank too has launched a probe into the matter, with a team headed by a field general manager from Lucknow arriving here for departmental inquiry, he added.

Besides Manju and Sita, Shakuntala Devi, Pankaj Gupta, Vaibhav Maheshwari, Nirmala, Meena Yadav, and two others have reported loss of their valuables, mostly jewellery, from these lockers, Kumar said.

Some patrons even claimed that when they tried to use the key to their lockers, they failed to work.

The locks yielded only when experts of the lock company on the panel of the bank were called in to open them.