Mumbai:
A goof-up by senior police officials gave serial bank robbers enough time to escape. While two have been arrested, seven members of the gang which looted three banks in the western suburbs are still at large.
The police constables attached to the Charkop police station had seized the bike used in the crime on Monday afternoon itself, hours after the robbery at Saraswat Bank in Charkop, Kandivli (West), after an alert customer informed the police about the bike's number and said that it was a black Pulsar. The number was flashed on wireless systems, and soon after, a police constable found a black Yahama bike with the same number.
The constables tried to convince superiors that the customer might have mistaken the make. They had also done proper investigations -- grilled the owner of the bike Sonu Yadav and learnt there are discrepancies in his statements. "When we called Yadav, he told the police that he had parked the bike at Ali's garage at 9.30am, while the garage owner had told us it was at 11.30am. This raised suspicion, but when we brought this to the notice of senior officials, they did not pay heed and asked us to focus on the Pulsar motorcycle," said a police official, who had grilled Yadav on the day of the incident.
"Yadav alerted his accomplices, who had reached the domestic airport by then. They aborted their plan and fled the city by train," the officer said.
Yadav showed up at the police station three hours after being contacted. "He tried to throw investigations off track with vague replies, but after sustained questioning, he broke down and revealed that he had bought the bike from Bhramhanand Dubey without documents," the officer said.
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