Reward for info on ATM attacker hiked to Rs 5 lakh

With the City police still groping for the identity of the man who attacked banker Jyothi Udaya at an ATM kiosk here on November 19, the State government on Monday increased the reward for those providing credible information about him to Rs five lakh from Rs one lakh.

Home Minister K J George told mediapersons that the City police were yet to trace the attacker despite their all-out efforts. He hoped that the increase in the reward money would help the police get credible information about the assailant from the public.

He said the government had distributed posters and photographs of the assailant in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. The CCTV footage of the attack had been given wide publicity in Kannada, Telugu and Tamil television channels. It has been nearly a month since special teams of the City police fanned out to Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu to trace the attacker. The City police have even sought the help of the elite Anti-Naxal Force of Andhra Pradesh to hunt him down.

A senior police officer said that in the past few weeks, the special teams were working on establishing the identity of the assailant and following up on every alert from the public about his sighting. Most of these alerts turned out to be false, and in some cases, before the police reached the spot, the suspect had vanished.

The City police will intensify the manhunt. He said all evidences would be re-examined to establish the identity of the assailant. He said it was a ‘blind case’ and in such cases, an element of luck was needed to crack it.