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.

Among the arrestees are the deputy manager, the operations manager and the service assistant of the said state bank.

The trio is accused of stealing 873g of pawned gold jewellery from the depository of the bank.

A CID team initiated probes into the incident 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, had learned that the items were, in fact, missing. After conducting an internal inspection, the bank’s employees realized that 13 packets of gold jewellery have disappeared from the depository.

The bank’s management subsequently 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 have used the depository’s 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 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).