Rs 1 crore cash robbed from arecanut trader, 4 held

Bengaluru: The Upparpet police have arrested four people, including a woman, who stole Rs 1 crore cash from an arecanut trader, officials said Thursday. The arrested were identified as Swami P B, Anupama N M, Pavan N, and S R Karthik..

According to the police, H S Umesh, a wholesale arecanut dealer from Chitradurga, filed a complaint on October 21 that the Rs 1 crore cash he was carrying in his car to buy the produce from sellers was stolen.

Umesh claimed that on October 7, he and the prime suspect Swami, whose Maruti Suzuki Ciaz the latter had rented, visited a few areca nut sellers in Sira and Tumakuru cities with the large sum kept in a blue bag inside the car’s trunk. As none of the sellers had any produce to sell, Umesh decided to visit his daughter in Bengaluru, the FIR noted.

The duo reached Bengaluru around 2 pm, parked the car near a Girias outlet in Gandhi Nagar, ate lunch in a hotel, and visited Umesh’s daughter. 

Around 4.30 pm, when they were returning to Chitradurga, Swami stopped the car at a hotel near Dabaspete to drink tea. When they reached Chitradurga, Umesh found out that the cash kept in the car’s trunk was missing. The suspects were arrested on October 22. Swami had planned the theft, with his associates, the police said.

Of the stolen Rs 1 crore, Rs 90.19 lakh was recovered. The cops also seized high-end phones, watches, and gold jewellery purchased using Rs 6.49 lakh from the stolen money.