The Chennai city police on Sunday arrested five men including four bank employees after Rs 25 lakhs was smuggled out of a bank to be exchanged for new notes. The money laundering deal, however, was however, botched up when the cash ended up being robbed, reported The Hindu.

Assistant Regional Manager of the State Bank of Mysore, Manjunath suspecting something was amiss filed a complaint on Saturday stating that about Rs 25 lakhs which was made up of withdrawn Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes was found missing from the bank’s vault in Shastri Nagar, Adyar.

Two bank employees, manager Lokeshwara Rao and cashier Elangovan along with a car diver, Sakthivel, had allegedly decided to convert the currency into legal denominations for unnamed customers through brokers at a private bank. 

Investigators say that Rao and Elangovan had allegedly decided to exchange Rs 25 lakhs for a sum of Rs 21 lakhs in return, with Rs 4 lakhs taken as commission for the transaction.

On Friday when Elangovan and Sakthivel went to get the cash exchanged, they were held at knife point by a gang of robbers, who fled with the suitcase of Rs 25 lakhs near Meenambakkam. They however, did not inform officials of the bank bout the incident despite a discrepancy in the account books between cash collected and distributed.

After the complaint was filed by Manjunath, the police suspecting it to be an inside job, followed Elangovan and Rao. The duo was arrested when they had a meeting with other members over the operation at a temple near the bank on Sunday. 

Elangovan and Rao reportedly confessed to taking the cash without the sanction of the higher officials in the bank and about the deal with two bank employees from a private bank – Mukesh and Mukandan, who had promised to convert Rs 25 lakhs for a commission. 

All five were arrest and the police is in search for four more accused, including Rajesh who carried out the robbery. They have been remanded in judicial custody till December 4.