KARACHI: Nine and a half million rupees were taken away from a money exchange outlet in Gulshan-i-Iqbal late Friday night in a theft in which burglars broke into the outlet’s rear wall and slipped away with all the cash with the utmost ease without alerting the lone security guard posted outside.

Police said the thieves must have spent hours and made considerable noise, trying to make a hole through the wall but strangely all that activity failed to alert the security guard and trigger the automatic alarm system.

It strengthened the detectives’ suspicions it might be an inside job and they took into custody the guard and six staffers for questioning.

Police officials said that women staffers of the Glaxy Exchange Private Limited informed their manager about the incident early in the morning when they arrived at its outlet on University Road and found its rear wall broken into and lockers unlocked.

“Two female staffers who arrived at their scheduled time in the morning entered the facility after unlocking the main entrance and found the rear wall broken into which separates their office from other offices in the same building. The lockers and drawers were unlocked and all the cash kept inside was missing,” said the area’s sub-divisional police officer (SDPO), DSP Nasir Laodhi.

They informed their manager who took half an hour to reach there and then informed police about the incident. Police thoroughly searched the crime scene and gathered enough evidence to arrive at the conclusion that the incident might be an inside job, said the official.

“The interesting point is that the alarm system had been off. Similarly, when police watched footage of the closed-circuit television cameras of the time when the theft might have taken place it emerged the cameras too had been on off mode during the night,” said DSP Lodhi.

He said the lone security guard had expressed ignorance about anyone entering the outlet during his overnight duty hours and said he only came to know about the theft from the women staffers who arrived in the morning.

“It appears the people who executed the job were well aware of the alarm and surveillance system. They even knew where the cash had been kept and which lockers were empty. They only unlocked the lockers which had the cash,” said DSP Lodhi.

The Aziz Bhatti police, meanwhile, took the six staffers of the company including women and the guard who was associated with a private security company into custody for questioning.

“As claimed by the company, the total value of the cash stolen away stood at around Rs9.5 million,” said Inspector Sarfaraz Aliana, the SHO of Aziz Bhatti police station.

“The cash includes only 39,000 Pakistani rupees while the rest is in US dollars, Saudi riyals, UAE dirhams and currencies of other countries,” he said.

He said the special investigation unit was also assisting them in the investigation of the brazen theft case and hoped the detectives would successfully solve the case in no time and nab the thieves.

Published in Dawn, October 5th, 2014