A woman who worked as domestic help of an elderly man in a highrise in Jadavpur for seven years has been arrested for allegedly stealing his ATM card after his death and handing it over to her son-in-law.

The card was allegedly used to withdraw Rs 35 lakh from ATMs in Nadia and Hooghly districts.

Police said Satyanarayan Agarwal, a resident of a highrise on Prince Anwar Shah Road, had passed away in January. Investigators said it was only in the first week of June that his son Anurag Agarwal, who lives in an apartment nearby, came to know that someone had withdrawn Rs 34.90 lakh from his father’s bank account after his death.

Rita Roy, 45, the domestic help, and her son-in-law and another relative have been arrested. Police said the ATM card she had allegedly stolen from the house was in a wallet, which also had a piece of paper on which the PIN was written.

“The deceased person’s son had gone abroad for a while. After returning, he checked his father’s mobile phone and his bank account and discovered that the money had been withdrawn between March 20 and May 30,” said an officer of the detective department.

The police found that at least 30 ATM transactions were made to withdraw the cash from ATM kiosks in Karimpur, Krishnagar and Ranaghat in Nadia and Hooghly districts, sources said.

Investigators collected CCTV footage from the ATM kiosks and spotted two men withdrawing money in all footage. But in all footage their faces were covered with masks and heads with caps.

The cops became suspicious about Rita when they found that all the kiosks from where the money was withdrawn in Nadia were not far from her ancestral home.

“We activated our sources in Karimpur, Ranaghat and Guptipara and one of the youths was identified as the son-in-law of the help,” said the officer.

Ranjit Mallick, 31, a resident of Karimpur was arrested from his home. It was followed by the arrest of his partner-in-crime, Soumitra Sarkar, 45, a resident of Guptipara, in Hooghly district. Both were arrested on August 13.

One of them allegedly said they had got the ATM card and the PIN from his mother-in-law (Rita). “We arrested the woman from her employer’s home on August 14,” said an officer.