Curious incident of the bank in night-time

“When his mother asked him why he helped Inaam, Jaswant said his work had dropped to a fourth since September-October,” Yadav says. “But we grow some wheat, bajra, mustard and vegetables, we had food to eat. I cannot understand why Jaswant took this risk.” Before handing over Jaswant to police, Yadav adds, he “gave him a good beating”.

Alwar Superintendent of Police Rahul Prakash calls Jaswant the mastermind. “All the four arrested have confessed. They said they were facing acute financial crunch because of demonetisation,” the SP says. If Jaswant ran a mobile shop adjacent to the bank, Inaam, 50, helped out at his brother Fazluddin’s tyre repair shop in front of the branch, apart from working as a labourer on a patch of farm adjacent to the bank, from where the break-ins were attempted. Yusuf, 23, was a daily wage labourer, while Khillu, 20, had told his family he worked at a furniture shop though police say he also did odd jobs. All four live within a kilometre of the bank.

On December 19, the four allegedly made their first robbery attempt, digging a hole in the rear wall of the bank next to Inaam’s farm. Not sure what to do next, they covered the damaged area with straw to avoid raising an alarm, and went about looking for help. Since the four hadn’t managed to dig all the way in, no one at the bank noticed the damaged wall. The bank has no guards, with the process to appoint one only on now. Says the SP, “When they couldn’t find anyone to help them break in, the four returned on their own on February 25 and 26.”

Senior Branch Manager at PNB Rang Lal Meena says the fact that the bank was closed on the two days — February 25 was the second Saturday of the month, and 26th a Sunday — “gave them some time”. According to police, on the night of February 25, they dug a small tunnel into the bank’s strong room from Inaam’s farm, but ran into a heavy steel cupboard. So they worked on the hole in the wall again, pushed the cupboard aside and entered the bank through the underground tunnel sometime between the nights of February 25 and 26.

“Being locals, they knew there is a power cut between 1-2 am and then 3-4 am. That’s when they apparently broke in, since the alarms did not go off. They next cut the wire which could have sounded the alarm when the power came on,” Meena says. But they could not break the time lock embedded in the vault — it allows the vault to be opened only at a designated time, even if the correct combination is entered — and only ended up damaging its handle a bit.

Anil Yadav, a constable at the Shekhpura police outpost that faces the bank branch, says the “inexperience” of the four was evident. Laughing, he adds, “Jaswant was the only one with some ‘experience’ — his friend Arif had tried to break into an ATM two years ago, while he sat outside on the getaway bike.” Gopi Chand, in charge of the police outpost, remembers Imaan rushing in around dawn on February 27. “He told us he had spotted six persons behind the bank.” Police claim Inaam was trying to mislead them.

Inaam’s father Yaseen Mev, 83, hasn’t been told he is in jail. Mev also continues to believe Inaam “helped police” in cracking the robbery. “I am proud of him,” he says. The family lives in Shekhpura. While admitting that demonetisation had hit their tyre business, Inaam’s brother Fazluddin says that couldn’t have pushed Inaam to burglary: “My brother is a Haji, he can never do such a thing.” Inaam has five girls and a boy with wife Magar Bi, the eldest two are teenagers and the youngest just 15 months old.

In Jojaka village, Khillu’s mother Sahmuri too challenges police: “Khoob taftish, khoob talashi karwa lo, aatho gaaon mein (investigate as much as you want, in all eight villages around). Everyone will testify to the honour of my son and our family.” Khillu and wife Aneesa have two daughters and a son. Police call him a daily wage labourer, but Aneesa believes what he told her about working in a furniture shop. However, she admits none of them knows much about notebandi. “I don’t know what it is all about,” butts in Sahmuri. “How could it have made my son try such a thing? I am told police just spotted him drinking soft drinks with one of the accused.”

In Yusuf’s Tajilka village too, people allege police high-handedness. “Police saw this as a lottery. They told some 40 persons that they were being investigated and took money to keep them out. Yusuf could not pay, so they put him in jail,” more than one villager says. At their one-room home, as her two young children huddle around her, wife Bassi says, “Yusuf was in the fields when police came. He went on their bike to the police station. Wouldn’t he have run away if he was guilty?”

Yusuf’s brother Iqbal, who lives with their father nearby, adds, “Yusuf would get barely 10 days’ work in a month after demonetisation, from about 20 days earlier. How could he have paid the thousands demanded by police?” Bank manager Meena wonders if the four knew how much money the bank branch held for all the trouble they went through: it was just over Rs 11 lakh in new notes. “We had been getting several empty trunks delivered to the bank at the time, which we filled with crores of demonetised currency. Perhaps they thought that crores of money was instead arriving at the bank in those trunks.”