The City police team investigating Sunday’s bank heist at Kovalam have obtained leads that indicate that it could have been a gang of three or five which could have carried out the job.
A mobile number, details of which the police are yet to make public, too has been obtained.
V.J. Jophy, Circle Inspector (Vizhinjam) and the investigating officer, said five persons who were staying in a house near Kovalam had left on Sunday and were still missing. Efforts were on to trace them. Four others taken into custody appeared to have no connection with the incident, he said.
The police, on Monday, obtained an outstation mobile number from a gas agency at Killippalam, from where the gang purchased two LPG cylinders for the gas cutters they used to cut through window grills and the locker in the bank.
The mobile number remained switched off from 6.30 a.m. on Sunday, with its last signals traced to Thampanoor.
The cylinders were purchased two days ago.
It also has come to light that two autorickshaws operating from Kovalam made early morning trips to the Thiruvananthapuram airport and to Thampanoor railway station. While one of these dropped two persons at the airport, the other dropped three persons at the railway station, all of whom did not appear to be Keralites.Messages have been passed on to airport and railway authorities on this, while efforts are on to verify whether these passengers were connected to the incident, Mr. Jophy said. Finding the bank’s strong room not ‘strong’ enough with its partition made of mere plywood, City Police Commissioner H. Venkatesh has issued a set of guidelines to be ‘strictly adhered to’ by banking and financial institutions in the city.
