PANAJI
An alleged thief, who attempted to make quick money by stealing what he thought was an ATM machine only to find himself in a bind when it turned out to be a passbook printing machine, was arrested by the Ponda police on Wednesday.
The accused is identified as Gautam Kumar, 29, a native of Bihar. The police said that he was arrested while he was hiding in the vicinity.
Around 3 am on Monday, a masked man tried to uproot the ATM machine from the SBI branch at Khandepar and ended up taking away the passbook printing machine, mistaking it as an ATM.
“In the CCTV footage, sourced from the bank officials, the man had covered his face with a piece of cloth. He didn’t succeed in uprooting the ATM machine, and presuming the machine next to it was also an ATM, the thief laid his hands on the latter. He carried the machine on his bicycle but realizing it was the wrong device, he dumped it on the roadside and escaped,” a police official said.
Relying on CCTV footage along the stretch leading to the crime scene and based on local intelligence, the police zeroed in on Kumar, who, during questioning confessed to having committed the theft.
It is learnt that the police have also recovered Rs 1.50 lakh from his possession. The accused has been booked under various sections of IPC and remanded to police custody.
