Gold ornaments worth more than Rs 1 crore were stolen from a bank near Park Circus in south Kolkata by a man who had entered the bank posing as a customer and then hid inside a washroom till the bank closed for the day, police said.
The man left the bank in the morning, the police said after examining the CCTV footage.
The suspect was wearing a helmet and had a surgical mask on so that the CCTV cameras at the bank on Syed Amir Ali Avenue could not capture his face.
“The man entered the bank between 4-4.30pm on July 11. He was seen entering a room which had an attached toilet. He was seen coming out at 11pm when the bank was completely empty,” said an officer.
The man then allegedly broke open a box of ornaments kept in the gold loan section, the police said.
According to the official complaint lodged by the bank, they had lost 2.5kg of gold.
On Tuesday morning, minutes after the bank opened for the day, the man, wearing the same helmet and the surgical mask, was seen walking out of the bank with a bag hung across his shoulders, an officer who had examined the CCTV footage said.
A senior officer in Lalbazar said from the way the theft was committed, it was apparent that the man had been to the bank a number of times and knew the exact location of the attached toilet and the location of the rack where the gold ornaments were kept.
“We are analysing the old CCTV footage of the bank to see if any person had been moving around in the area in a suspicious way or if anyone had been visiting the bank without any valid reason,” the officer said.
The matter was reported to the Karaya police station on Wednesday.
No one was arrested till late on Thursday night.