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Mumbai: A 33-year-old man, working as a service manager with the State Bank of India has been arrested by the Bhandup police for allegedly siphoning off about 4 kg gold jewellery worth around Rs 3 crore from the bank’s locker.

According to the first information report (FIR) registered at the Bhandup police station on Feb 28, by Amit Kumar, who works as a branch manager at SBI’s Mulund branch, the accused Manoj Maruti Mhaske and he works at the personal banking branch, which mainly provides gold loans.

Suspicion of Missing Gold Jewelry

The matter first surfaced on Feb 27 when Mhaske was on leave, and Kumar was provided with the duty and custody of the branch’s gold locker. In the evening, Kumar said that he noticed some of the gold jewellery packets had gone missing. “Till Feb 26, around 63 gold loans were ongoing, and hence there should be 63 gold jewellery packets inside the locker, but there were only 4 of them, 59 missing,” said Kumar in his statement to the police.

Kumar immediately called Mhaske to check with him, and to his surprise, Mhaske confessed about “taking away the gold temporarily” which was kept from October 2023 to Feb 26. Mhaske assured Kumar that he would return the gold within a week. Kumar later informed his seniors, and they calculated the missing gold jewellery packets, which turned out to be worth over Rs. 3 crore.

Bhandup Police Intervenes Into The Matter

Mhaske was called to the branch and he showed up and assured them to return the gold in some time. Subsequently, they approached the Bhandup police and registered a case. Later on, Mhaske was arrested by the police and they initiated the process of recovering the gold jewellery.

Mhaske, a Malad’s Raheja Township resident, has been charged with criminal breach of trust by a banker under section 409 of the Indian Penal Code.