Jui Nagar bank locker robbery: How shop used by burglars to dig tunnel functioned in Mumbai

An employee from Shubham Real Estate Consultants next to the shop uses a metaphor “hamare pair ke neeche se zameen nikal gayi aur humein pata bhi nahin chala” (the ground was swept from under our feet and we didn’t even get to know it). He refers to the tunnel that was dug from Shree Balaji general stores to the bank that went under their shop.

The tunnel dug by the accused. Express

SHREE BALAJI general stores in Jui Nagar, Navi Mumbai, is probably the only one that gave a five-hour lunch break to its employees. The shop had five-hour work days and wrapped up at 6 pm daily, locals said. Till last week, other people who owned nearby shops thought it was lack of ambition on part of the two young men who ran the general store, frugally stocked with biscuits and wafers.

But it all fell in place when they came to know that the “two employees” working at the shop were actually using it as a front while they dug a nearly 30 feet tunnel, crossing over two other shops and an ATM, to the locker room of the Jui Nagar branch of Bank of Baroda from where they allegedly looted valuables worth nearly Rs 2.80 crore on November 11. Chintaram Gavani, the security guard at the Bank of Baroda ATM, adjacent to the bank, said: “It was an unusual shop. They would pull up the shutters in the morning at 8 and pull down the shutter around 11 am. After that, they would pull up the shutters again around 4 pm and call it a day at 6 pm. I would ask them how do they manage to pay the rent, since there were hardly any customer at the shop. They would say something will work out. There were only two youngsters who would be seated at the ‘provision store’. They had stocked up a few packets of biscuits and chips in two cupboards.” A police officer called it a ‘Bollywood type shop’ where the only purpose was to give an impression that the shop was operating.”

An employee from Shubham Real Estate Consultants next to the shop uses a metaphor “hamare pair ke neeche se zameen nikal gayi aur humein pata bhi nahin chala” (the ground was swept from under our feet and we didn’t even get to know it). He refers to the tunnel that was dug from Shree Balaji general stores to the bank that went under their shop.

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The owner of a nearby shop said on condition of anonymity: “You can see the tiles in the shop. There is not a crack. We did not hear any digging or any sound for that matter. They must obviously be digging at night when no one was in any of the shops.”

The owner of Shubham Real Estate Consultants said: “Most of the times their shop would be shut. I had once told them ‘kya time pass kar rahein ho (why are you wasting time)?’ In fact, so many of us had told them that they should keep their shop open for longer.”

A police officer said they suspect the accused must have been sleeping in the afternoons and after work so that they could carry out digging in the night when no one was around. “Based on the CCTV footage we have, it seems the accused would work in the night and throw the debris filled in white bags around 6.30 am. We have found many bags full of debris in a shrubbery across the road from the bank. It looks like they were digging for at least two months,” an officer said. On November 11, the accused, who had taken the general store on rent, two shops away from the Bank of Baroda Jui Nagar branch, entered the locker room of the bank. They dug through a 25 feet tunnel from the shop to the bank, broke open 30 lockers and fled with jewellery and valuables suspected to be worth Rs 2.8 crore. The police have “strong leads” and an officer said teams have been sent to across the country to track down the robbers.

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