Pradeep Shukla’s get-rich-quick plan may have crashed with his arrest, but he definitely did leave a few others richer by a few hundred rupees.
Soon after Shukla opened two of the nine cash boxes, he felt like donating some part of it. By the time he was done, he distributed at least Rs 4,000 of the Rs. 10,500 that police have been unable to recover.
The first to benefit was an employee at a restaurant from where he purchased his dinner. Investigations have revealed that Shukla gave him a Rs. 500 currency note, even though the bill was much lesser.
“At least half-a-dozen other persons have benefited. One was a labourer, another was a security guard,” a senior officer told The Hindu based on the investigations conducted so far. The distributed money was not entirely recovered till this report was filed.
Each donation comprising Rs. 500 notes would be accompanied by remarks such as “tu bhi kya yaad rakhega” (you will remember this for long) and “le, teri kismet khul gayi” (your luck has shone).
The officer also quoted an eyewitness as saying that Shukla insisted that a guard keep the money, even though he refused to take it.
Shukla also spent some money on himself by buying clothes and getting himself a bottle of alcohol.
He is also learnt to have told the police that he had planned to move to Nepal with his wife and children and lie low for sometime before returning to India.
“When we asked him how he intended to spend the money, he said he would have used it all for donation. When we intensified our questioning, he revealed he had planned to invest much of the money into buying property,” said an interrogator.
A background check on Shukla has revealed that he was an eyewitness in a shooting incident reported from Zamrudpur in south-east Delhi earlier in February this year.
Six persons were injured when a security guard accompanying a cash van owned by his previous employer opened fire during a brawl.
Shukla, however, was not named in the crime. Police are yet to identify if he was involved in any other criminal cases before this.
His wife, meanwhile, has claimed that he was frustrated with the low salary ever since he joined SIS — the security company that owned the cash van involved in the multi-crore heist.
“He was receiving much lesser than his salary on paper,” she alleged.
A senior officer with the security company, however, has denied the allegations saying they have bank statements as evidence to prove the allegations wrong.
The accused has been booked under Section 407 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) pertaining to criminal breach of trust.
He has now been sent to two days in police custody during which interrogators hope to extract more on the heist from him.
