Bank manager ‘steals’ Rs 1 crore, pays conman who promised to return double amount

Yelahanka police arrested a bank manager, a peon and two of their associates who allegedly stole Rs 1 crore from the bank.

Police recovered Rs 60 lakh from the arrested manager Arun Veermalla, a Rajarajeshwarinagar resident and a native of Telangana; peon Ramakrishna, a Hassan native residing in Banashankari; loan agent and BEML Layout resident Basavaraju, hailing from Ballari; and Bagalur resident Imtiyaz, who is Arun’s friend and a native of Hubballi.

Police said Veermalla, manager of Bank of Baroda’s RR Nagar branch, went to the bank’s chest on Siddiah Road and took Rs 1 crore for the bank’s transaction. He left the bank in a hurry without depositing the money. In the evening, he called the manager of another branch and asked her to raise a receipt to show that he was depositing Rs 1 crore to that branch.

Finding this odd, she called up the regional manager, Ritesh Kumar.

Kumar told police that Veermalla and Ramakrishna called the bank on the same evening to inform that unknown miscreants have stolen Rs 1 crore from them and they are at the Chikkajala police station. The regional manager filed a complaint naming Veermalla as a suspect.

Chikkajala police directed Veermalla to Yelahanka since the place of the robbery he mentioned fell within their jurisdiction. By then, police had taken up Kumar’s complaint and inspector M B Ramakrishna Reddy found in his investigation that Veermalla had given the stolen money to Imtiyaz who promised to pay back Rs 2 crore on receiving Rs 1 crore in cash.

Imtiyaz took the money from an apartment near the Yelahanka police station. Instead of returning the money, he gave excuses and turned fugitive. Ramakrishna and Basavaraju abetted the crime in the hope of sharing the riches if Imtiyaz returned Rs 2 crore.

“We are investigating further to recover the rest of the money and nab Imtiyaz’s associates,” said a senior officer.