Pune Crime Files | How police cracked case of Rs 2.2 crore robbery at Bank of Maharashtra branch in home minister’s constituency

As news of the bank robbery spread, about 600 villagers gathered at the spot. Police said many among them had deposited their gold and hard-earned money in the bank. Some were shocked that in broad daylight robbers looted a bank located in the constituency of the then home minister Dilip Walse Patil.

IPS officer Abhinav Deshmukh, then superintendent of Pune rural police, along with senior officers from the local crime branch and the Shirur police station, reached the spot for investigation. The investigation revealed that five robbers wearing hand gloves and faces covered with masks had come in a silver colour car.

Eight police teams were formed to investigate the bank robbery. The probe teams tried to gather clues about the robbers from their informers and through CCTV cameras on the roads that they had possibly used while escaping from the spot in their car. But it was learnt that robbers had purposely avoided the main roads while escaping from Pimparkhed village. Instead, to move out of the region, they used internal roads where no CCTVs were installed.

Finally, after a rigorous search operation, the police got clues from a CCTV camera installed at a washing centre in Ahilyanagar district, about 60 km away from the bank. Robbers had taken a halt there and moved out of the car for some time. Their faces appeared in the CCTV at the spot.

A team led by then police inspector Sureshkumar Raut of the Shirur police station, who is now a deputy superintendent of police (DySP) in Latur, identified and arrested the five robbers, within eight days of the incident.

They included Pravin alias Dollar Sitaram Ovhal, 29, of Khed; Ankur Mahadev Pawale, 24, of Junnar; Vikas Suresh Gunjal, 20, of Shirur in Pune district; Dhondibhau alias Dhondya Mahadev Jadhav, 29; and Adinath Machhindra Pathare, 25, of Parner in Ahilyanagar district.

The police said Pravin alias Dollar, a dreaded criminal, led the bank robbery. But the case was not completely solved despite his arrest.

DySP Raut said Dollar and his three accomplices said they had hidden the robbed jewellery and cash in the ground by digging a hole in a sugarcane farm in Shirur.

“But when the police checked this spot, no gold or money was found. Meanwhile, the fifth accused, Dhondya Jadhav, was arrested from the house of his second wife in the Khed area. We observed that he became highly uncomfortable and felt insulted when he was questioned in front of his wife and family members. He requested us to take him away from his family. Then he revealed how he removed the valuables hidden in the ground and again kept them in another hole dug in a sugarcane farm at a nearby location. We seized the robbed valuables from this second spot shown to us by Dhondya…,” said DySP Raut.

The police said almost 90 per cent of the gold and money robbed from the bank were recovered. They also seized two cars from the accused.

To destroy evidence, the accused burnt the clothes and shoes they were wearing at the time of the robbery. The police collected the remains of the burnt items for chemical analysis. Also, the accused had changed the colour of a car they had used for the bank loot. The police seized this car from Madhya Pradesh.

DySP Raut said a chargesheet against the five accused was filed and that the case was pending before a court, with all the accused lodged in jail.

For solving the case, Raut received the Union home minister’s Medal for Excellence in Investigation for 2022, from DGP Rashmi Shukla on June 13.