ITANAGAR, Dec 4:  In a major breakthrough the Capital Police led by Superintendent of Police, Sagar Singh Kalsi today arrested a couple in connection with vandalism of several ATMs in the state capital which occurred over the past four months.

The accused Nima Wangchu, 34, a resident of Dirang in West Kameng and Puja Kuma, 22, of Kolam, Khonsa in Tirap district were arrested by police and will be produced in court.

Several documents and large quantity of iron tools and clothes used for executing the crime have also been recovered.

‘Capital Police laid several traps for last 15-20 days and were on the lookout to nab those involved. We got support of human intelligence, bank support and several other inputs which led to the arrest of the couple,’ Kalsi said.

The arrests were made after thoroughly studying CCTV footage from various ATMs.

‘Modus Operandi was almost the same in all the cases,’ the SP disclosed.

 Over the past few months several ATM vandalism of different banks were reported in the entire capital complex. So far 43 case have been reported and registered in Itanagar, Naharlagun and Nirjuli police stations of the capital complex. Police say that despite the arrests, they will continue to investigate the case. 

‘ATMs have been vandalised from Nirjuli to Chimpu which is quite an upsetting trend. ATM is public property which is not being used by a single person and sometimes they do not work due to several reasons but vandalism is not the solution,’ said SP Kalsi adding that due to such attacks thousands of bank consumers are suffering.

While Police quote a loss of Rupees 4 lakhs in such attacks, banks and security agencies put the figure at a staggering Rupees 1 crore.

They further informed that expenses might go up as all machines are under maintenance. But the most important point is that consumers have been suffering, they said.

An exercise of security audit of banks-ATMs is underway to strengthen security and remove lacunas.

Led by SP Kalsi, SDPO Naharlagun Make Bui, SDPO Itanagar Dekio Gumja, OC Itanagar Tabi Bage, OC Naharlagun N Riba, OC Nirjuli K. Dev, SI N Nishant, SI AK Singh, ASI AK Jha were the subordinate officers.

 

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Kenter Joya Riba

(Managing Editor)
      She is a graduate in Science with post graduation in Sociology from University of Pune. She has been in the media industry for nearly a decade. Before turning to print business, she has been associated with radio and television.
Email: kenterjoyaz@easternsentinel.in / editoreasternsentinel@gmail.com
Phone: 0360-2212313

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