Chennai: As if to prove that money stored in ATM chests is not safe, a gang broke open an ATM on Chennai-Bengaluru highway at Melmanavur village in Vellore district early Saturday morning using a gas cutter and escaped with nearly Rs 6 lakh.
Though there were so many unsuccessful attempts — including bombing in and around Chennai to break open ATM — it looks like in the latest incident robbers proved ATMs are vulnerable to gas cutters.
It was only on Saturday morning some local people reported the incident to the Virinjipuram police station. A police team headed by a deputy superintendent of police found the ATM chest empty and that the robbers had used gas cutters to open the heavy metal kiosk. “The intruders had changed the direction of camera as soon as they had entered the cabin. Then they had used the cutter and emptied the machine. Only on Friday, the machine was refilled," police sources said. Though it is a 24-hour ATM belonging to a private bank there was no guard for it, police said.
A sniffer dog, brought to the scene, could not zero in on anybody. Police believe that the robbers had watched the ATM operation for some days and could have decided to strike on Friday night because cash was refilled earlier in the day.
In another incident, two persons tried to break open a bank ATM at RK Pet near Tiruttani in neighbouring Tiruvallur district on Saturday early morning. They had damaged the camera and was trying to break open the ATM when people in the locality became suspicious and alerted police. The criminals escaped before police reached the spot.
