The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has arrested three employees of a state bank in Oddamavadi for stealing pawned gold jewellery to the tune of LKR 20 million.

According to the police, among the arrestees are the deputy manager, operations manager and the service assistant of the said state bank.

The trio is accused of stealing pawned 873g of gold jewellery from the safety-deposit box of the state bank.

The CID team had initiated probes into the matter after receiving a complaint about several pieces of gold jewellery that had gone missing from the depository of the bank.

An individual, upon visiting the bank to retrieve the gold jewellery he had pawned in November last year to obtain a loan, had learned that the items were, in fact, missing. After conducting an inspection, the bank employees realized that 13 packets of gold jewellery have been disappeared from the depository.

The bank’s management has suspended the duties of the deputy manager over the incident.

During the interrogations, he had confessed that two other female employees – an operations manager and a service assistant – too were complicit in the theft. They were later placed under arrest by the CID investigators.

They had used the depository keys which were in their possession to steal the gold jewellery on three occasions.

After stealing 13 packets of gold jewellery, the trio had sold them to gold jewellery shops in the area for LKR 13.7 million out of which LKR 5.7 million was retained by the deputy manager to settle a loan. The operations manager, meanwhile, held on to LKR 5 million, which she deposited in a bank for her daughter. The service assistant had purchased a three-wheeler and a piece of land from the LKR 3 million she received.

The trio was remanded until June 16 after being produced before the Valachchenai Magistrate’s Court on Friday (June 02).