Delhi ATM robbery: Cash van driver arrested

Delhi police on Friday arrested the alleged cash van driver who made away with Rs 22.5 crore that belonged to an Axis Bank branch. According to the police, stolen money has been recovered from the driver's possession.

The driver was arrested in the wee hours on Friday from a godown in Okhla, where he was in hiding. So far, he has turned out to be the only accused in the case, said a police official, a day after the heist. The stolen cash was also recovered but the final evaluation is yet to be done, the police official added.

Also read: Driver who fled with Rs 22.5 crore ATM cash arrested in Okhla

Identified as Pradeep Shukla, the accused driver of the cash transit van allegedly fled with around Rs 22.5 crore from southeast Delhi's Govindpuri area on Thursday evening. The incident was reported when the armed guard accompanying the van asked the driver to stop the vehicle near the Govindpuri metro station so that he could relieve himself by the roadside, the police said.

After Shukla fled with the van, Patel rushed to the nearest Axis Bank branch in the area and informed the authorities around 4.30 pm. Bank authorities then started tracking the cash transit van through the GPS input and found it abandoned close to a petrol pump near the Govindpuri metro station, with all nine cash boxes missing.

It was at 5.48 pm that the authorities informed the police. A special team comprising two subdivisions, the operations wing and special staff was then formed to crack the case. The team started with backgrounds checks of the driver.

Also read: Driver of ATM cash van flees with Rs 22.5 crore in Delhi

Shukla, who is a native of Ballia district in Uttar Pradesh, was a new inductee at the security agency. In the records, the driver claimed that he lived with his wife, a native of Mau district in the same state, at a rented accommodation in south Delhi's Kotla Mubarakpur area, but the information did not verify when a police team was sent there.

Police at both the UP districts were intimated about the case and were asked to keep a vigil on all movements. However, it later turned out that Shukla was living in a rented accommodation at Harkesh Nagar, close to the spot where the van was found and also to the godown from where he was later arrested. However, his wife did not have any idea about the incident, said the police source.

Senior officials said the case was finally cracked on the basis of human inputs and the entire industrial area at Okhla Phase III was searched intensively, leading the team to Shukla, who was hiding at an electrical wire godown. The police also said there was negligence on part of the security agency.