Chennai: Unsuccessful attempts were made to break into the vault and an ATM kiosk of two different nationalised banks, in Madhavaram and in neighbouring Kancheepuram, during the wee hours on Friday.
At Madhavaram, the local branch of IOB had a nocturnal visitor who wanted to decamp with the money from its vault. Encouraged by the absence of a night watchman, the intruder, armed with an iron sickle, sneaked into the bank by picking the lock of the front shutter in the first floor facility. Once past that door, he needed to open no locks inside the bank and he had pretty easy access until the vault door. However, his attempts to open the vault failed miserably and the intruder abandoned the attempt after an hour-long ordeal.
A CCTV grab from the footage exposed the entire act of the intruder, who was dressed in a full sleeve T-shirt and denim trousers. The footage from the cameras present in the façade of the bank's building is being viewed by the cops for a suitable image to establish his identity. No fingerprints useful to the investigation have been lifted from the crime scene yet.
“We believe he is an amateur since he did not have a proper crowbar for a break-in. He was wearing some type of gloves, and there was water on the shutter, which had erased his fingerprints. From his looks, he appears to be a migrant from North India”, said a senior police official privy to the investigation.
The incident came to light when the bank's manager Balakrishnan (59) turned up to open the bank at around 9.45 am. The second incident of a failed break-in was reported at the ATM kiosk of SBI, installed on Grand Southern Trunk road, in Kumaran Nagar, in Mannivakkam, near Tambaram. The burglar had abandoned his tools on the spot after having moved the kiosk from its original position.
“He may have given a thought to taking the entire kiosk with him, but it didn't work out his way,” said a senior police official. Cases have been registered in both incidents and probes are on.
