KARACHI, Sept 24: Armed men stormed into a branch of a private bank in SITE on Monday, held the staff at gunpoint and walked off with Rs2 million cash in the second bank heist of the current month and the 14th of the year.

Police said that at around 12.30pm five bandits entered a United Bank Limited branch located in Metroville within the remit of the SITE-A police station and disarmed the two bank guards holding repeater rifles.

They held the bank staff at gunpoint, collected the money from the cash counters and escaped along with the two guns, the police said, adding that the robbers did not go towards the strong room in search of more cash.

The police said that the bandits escaped on motorcycles. It took them around five minutes to execute the heist, they added.

SITE-A SHO Rao Rafique said that the repeaters of the two security guards were not loaded and they had cartridges in their pockets.

He added that although the bandits did not try to take away the digital video recorder, it took the bank five hours to hand over the CCTV footage to the police.

The bank took the plea that an official responsible for handling the CCTV cameras arrived late at the bank.

A case (FIR 486/2012) was registered on a complaint of the bank manager, Safiur Rehman, at the SITE-A police station against unidentified robbers under Sectionss 392 (punishment for robbery) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code.

Earlier on Sept 19, armed bandits had taken away Rs1.8 million in a bank heist in Nazimabad.