7, including home guard, held for Medchal robbery
Seven persons, including a Home Guard working with the Hyderabad Police, the manager and two supervisors of a petrol bunk were arrested for robbing the bunk last month in Medchal. Police said the employees had planned the robbery to cover up their embezzlement of `18 lakh of the bunk’s money.
The suspects were identified as manager M Satyanarayana, supervisors K. Sanjeev Reddy and N. Raju, Home Guard K. Shankar, and M. Santosh alias Chinna, G. Bhaskar and G. Venkatesh. Three others, Subbaraju, Sravan and Mahesh, are absconding.
Balanagar DCP Dr Y. Saishekar told the media that Satyanarayana had been working at the Bharat Petroleum petrol station at Athuvelli for nine years. Supervisors Raju and Sanjeev Reddy had been employed there for 10 and six years respectively.
Since two years they had been stealing the petrol bunk’s money; whenever there was an inspection, they used to make it up from other sources.
Sanjeev and Raju, who the police say had stolen `2 lakh, were planning to return the money and quit the job. Satyanarayana threatened to commit suicide if they quit, and so they planned the robbery.
Sanjeev Reddy roped in Santosh, a bike mechanic, realtors Bhaskar and Venkat and the Home Guard.
They attacked the guard and other employees at the bunk on the night of December 11 and fled with the cash.
They damaged CCTV cameras, and took the DVR equipment. “They stabbed the staff to make it look like a real dacoity,” the DCP said. Later, Raju lodged a police complaint.
The Home Guard, Shankar, was arrested in December 2015 for snatching the mobile phones of two people. He was suspended then. Recently, he was deputed to the Hyderabad Traffic Police wing and was under training.