The Chennai police, on Monday, arrested a 39-year-old private bank employee for stealing cash from its ATM in Maduravoyal.
As per reports, D Sivanandhan, a resident of West Mambalam, was earlier working in the Maduravoyal branch of the Tamil Nadu Mercantile Bank before he was transferred to the Ambattur branch.
On Sunday, around 12.30 pm, he entered the ATM kiosk on MMDA East Main Road, Maduravoyal, posing as a disinfection worker. Once he was inside, he keyed in the password to open the cash chest of the ATM machine. To his surprise, he found that the password was the one he had set on the machine, when he was at the Maduravoyal branch three years ago.
As he was bundling the cash from the chest, another customer arrived and waited outside to use the ATM. However, he noticed that Sivanandhan was opening the cash chest and assumed that he was an authorised employee.
When Sivanandhan rushed out of the ATM booth and boarded an auto rickshaw, the customer got suspicious and alerted the branch manager. The manager immediately arrived at the ATM and checked the chest and found that Rs 8.2 lakh cash was missing.
Based on the manager’s complaint, the Maduravoyal police launched a search and questioned around a dozen persons including bank employees. The police also analysed CCTV footage of the ATM and gathered that the password to open the ATM cash chest had not been changed by the branch in a long time. This posed a security risk since many employees -- present and past -- knew the password to access cash. After several rounds of questioning, the police arrested Sivanandhan from his house on Monday.
During inquiry, Sivanandhan reportedly told the police that he had stolen the money since he was not able to pay off a loan that he took for constructing a house in his native town in Thoothukudi district.