An employee of a company that supplies cooking gas, who had reported that he lost the money he had been asked to deposit in an office, has been found to have allegedly engaged a neighbour to throw the bag in a garbage vat after clearing its contents.

A CCTV footage allegedly showing the neighbour disposing of the bag in the vat led the cops to the employee.

The incident happened in New Alipore on Wednesday when Sanjib Thakur, an employee of a cooking gas supply company that has an office in Joka, was entrusted with depositing Rs 2 lakh in the firm’s New Alipore office.

Around two hours after he was handed the money, Thakur returned to the Joka office and said the bag had fallen off his motorcycle. The company’s owner, Olivia Roy, had launched a search for the bag and it was found in a garbage vat of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation between Mahabirtala and Joka.

Roy lodged a general diary with New Alipore police station on Thursday morning.

“The owner was convinced that the employee had genuinely lost the money. But we decided to carry out a probe. Luckily, we found that the garbage vat where the empty bag was found was directly under a CCTV camera,” said an officer of New Alipore police station.

The CCTV footage showed a man throwing the bag into the vat.

“We took a still from the footage and went to the home of the employee. We showed the image to people in the neighbourhood, who said the man was a resident of the area and his name was Ramjan Sheikh,” the officer said.

Sheikh’s house was searched and the money was allegedly found there. “Sheikh admitted that Thakur had asked him to empty the bag and throw it into the garbage vat,” the officer said.

Thakur and Sheikh have been arrested on charges of cheating, criminal breach of trust and criminal conspiracy.

Senior officers said such incidents of employees breaching the trust of employers and stealing the former’s money when asked to submit it in banks or other offices were becoming very common.