NEW DELHI: A group of six men stole an ATM machine of the State Bank of India (SBI) in North-east Delhi's Bhajanpura area in the wee hours of Sunday after plucking out the CCTV camera installed in the ATM booth to leave no proof behind.
However, the theft was captured on CCTV cameras installed outside another store nearby.
"It were the cameras outside a jewellery store that gave us the clues," said a senior police officer.
However, the thieves are yet to be identified and arrested, the officer said.
"We were informed about the theft by bank officials in the morning.
The CCTV footage from the ATM booth was lost as the hard disk containing the footage was stolen along with the machine," the officer said.
The initial investigation, based on the CCTV footage recovered by the police from the jewellery store, has found that the thieves arrived at Subhash Market in a tempo.
They parked the vehicle outside the ATM and entered the booth room with some tools.
No guard was present at the spot when the theft took place. As the six men entered the ATM booth, the footage showed some street dogs began to bark at them but the " men seemed to have come prepared and silenced the canines by feeding them biscuits", said the officer.
"The thieves worked from 2: 35 am to 3: 05 am to uproot the machine.
While some of their faces were covered with scarves, the faces of others were visible in the footage," informed the police officer.
The men in the footage can be seen using a gas cutter to slice off the base of the machine. After plucking out the wires from the machine, they dragged the machine out and loaded it into the tempo and left.
It was only on Sunday morning that the incident came to the police's notice when some bank officials arrived to deposit money in the vending machine but instead found the entire machine missing with only wires strewn all over the floor.
While the police believe the culprits had no idea about the amount of cash stored in the machine at the time of the theft, bank officials confirmed it was loaded with over ` 8 lakh.
The police have registered a case under appropriate sections of the Indian Penal Code and the hunt is on to nab the accused.
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