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- By a Parinda Crime Reporter, January 30, 2006, 13:50 IST
Mumbai: The cache of arms seized from a locker of the State Bank of India's branch at Bandra may open a Pandora’s Box.
There are speculations among the cops that an assassin may have planned a strike in Mumbai, but was killed in a police encounter or could have fled before the plan materialized.
The "Franchi' assault gun seized on Friday is a special weapon generally used for its accuracy to hit the target.
Since the account was opened when insurgency was at its peak in Punjab, the recovery of detonators, explosives along with the gun certainly suggest that the person who hired the locker may have planned an assassination, which fizzled out eventually.
The bank account record show that there was a minimal monetary transaction, also suggesting that the account was opened only with a motive to hire the bank locker, they added. However, the transactions shown in the other passbooks found in the locker show transactions in huge amounts.
"The Franchi gun is generally used by American secret service agents, and is not generally used by terrorists groups although there have been a few instances of recovery of this weapon in Punjab and J&K," Police Commissioner A N Roy later said here.
The cache was recovered after SBI authorities broke open the locker that was inoperative since 1990 and the person who hired it had not paid rent, sources said, adding that several reminders sent to him returned undelivered. Police plans to interrogate three officials of SBI who were with this branch during the relevant period.
The main query is that if the rent was not paid and if the reminders were returned undelivered why the locker was not opened.
The Franchi gun, which was originally manufactured by company Luigi Franchi of Brescia in 1956 for Italian Navy, is known for its accurancy and rapid firepower, with speed being 500 rounds per minute, Roy said. According to him, the hand grenades numbering 12, bear a mark of" 26 mmk-1" but do not suggest the name of ordinance factory that manufactured it. A second gun with its handle and some parts missing was also found in the locker, Roy added.
Joint Police Commissioner (Law & Order) Arup Patnaik said that during the preliminary investigations, police found that the address provided by the account holder and the person who introduced him were fictitious.
"We have, however, identified the bank official who had verified the signature and are tracing him to check if he could help in the investigations," Patnaik said. Police recovered 16 passbooks from the locker, all of them of branches of nationalised banks at Chandigarh and adjoining towns. "We have been told that all these accounts are also inoperative for all these years, although a team of Mumbai police has left to ascertain details," Patnaik added.
According to senior police officials, the probe to find out the person who hired the locker was a painstaking job and even if the job was done, the possibility that the person may have been neutralised by police in the post-1984 operations, or may have fled country were big. Meanwhile, the police is awaiting reports of forensic tests that will be done on the explosive powder seized along with the weapons.
Meanwhile, the Union Home Ministry has taken a serious view of the arms haul and asked the RBI to take a closer look at what lies inside lakhs of bank lockers many of them inoperative for years, all over the country. StateDGP Dr P S Pasricha has also taken up the issue with officials in Maharashtra. New norms are in the offing for lockers. Besides banks, and the Indian Postal Service, some private enterprises also offer locker services, I though the number of such is very few.
The shocking incident has opened a Pandora's Box for the RBI. During the late 1990s, when many nationalised banks automated their systems, while the regular banking systems got computerised, additional functions like the locker systems were neglected. During the computerisation drive, data stored in ledgers was digitised. However, support functions and some value-added services which were non-revenue generating didn't get onto the IT bandwagon Worse, they were deigned to the backseat.
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