Hyderabad: Seven persons, including a Home Guard working with the Hyderabad Police, the manager and two supervisors of a petrol bunk were arrested for robbing the bunk last month in Medchal. Police said the employees had planned the robbery to cover up their embezzlement of Rs 18 lakh of the bunk’s money.
The suspects were identified as manager M Satyanarayana, supervisors K. Sanjeev Reddy and N. Raju, Home Guard K. Shankar, and M. Santosh alias Chinna, G. Bhaskar and G. Venkatesh. Three others, Subbaraju, Sravan and Mahesh, are absconding.
Balanagar DCP Dr Y. Saishekar told the media that Satyanarayana had been working at the Bharat Petroleum petrol station at Athuvelli for nine years. Supervisors Raju and Sanjeev Reddy had been employed there for 10 and six years respectively.
Since two years they had been stealing the petrol bunk’s money; whenever there was an inspection, they used to make it up from other sources.
Sanjeev and Raju, who the police say had stolen Rs 2 lakh, were planning to return the money and quit the job. Satyanarayana threatened to commit suicide if they quit, and so they planned the robbery.
Sanjeev Reddy roped in Santosh, a bike mechanic, realtors Bhaskar and Venkat and the Home Guard.
They attacked the guard and other employees at the bunk on the night of December 11 and fled with the cash.
They damaged CCTV cameras, and took the DVR equipment. “They stabbed the staff to make it look like a real dacoity,” the DCP said. Later, Raju lodged a police complaint.
The Home Guard, Shankar, was arrested in December 2015 for snatching the mobile phones of two people. He was suspended then. Recently, he was deputed to the Hyderabad Traffic Police wing and was under training.
Staff took cue from unsolved robberies
The employees of the Bharat Petroleum bunk at Athuvelli decided to rob the bunk after two robberies there in 2006 and 2008, went unsolved. The planning began in November. Police found the gang started reporting less sales a few days before December 11, when they staged the robbery. They manipulated records to show there was Rs 22 lakh in the till when in fact there was just Rs 4 lakh.
Bunk supervisor Sanjeev Reddy roped in bike mechanic Santosh into the gang as he regularly serviced his bike. Realtors Bhasker and Venkat joined after they discussed their debts with Santosh.
“When they staged the dacoity, Bhaskar was drunk and fell asleep. Afterwards Venkat went to his village to attend his mother’s final rites. After seeing the news in the media, they demanded Rs 1.4 lakh from Sanjeev Reddy and threatened to inform the police if they were not paid,” an official said.
Sanjeev Reddy paid the money. Shankar took Rs 1.10 lakh and Raju cleared some debts with the booty and Chinna purchased a phone.
Police collected the mobile numbers of the bunk’s staffers and initially believed it to be a robbery, due to the injuries on the staff. “But they were using other numbers. We tracked their mobiles and traced them by analysing the records,“ the official added.
