UP: 3 arrested for robbing district cooperative bank

Lakhimpur Kheri (UP), Jan 25 (PTI) Three persons were arrested Wednesday for allegedly robbing Rs 32 lakh from a district cooperative bank here, police said on Wednesday.

The three robbers included their kingpin Suresh Umke alias Sagar Deshmukh of Maharashtra who had in 2010 carried out plastic surgery on his face to evade arrest, Superintendent Police Ganesh Prasad Saha said.

The arrests were made DSP of Lakhimpur Sandeep Singh. The other two arrested accused were Tushar Kumar and Hari Prasad, both residents of Pratapgarh district.

Umke has a long criminal history of bank robbery. He has 24 cases of robbery and other crimes registered against him in Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, SP Saha said.

With the arrests, Rs 4.5 lakh of the looted amount, a country-made pistol and equipment used in cutting the bank locker have been seized, the officer said.

On January 16, the allegedly accused broke into the Rajapur Mandi branch of the district cooperative dank with the help of gas cutters and decamped with cash, police said. PTI COR CDN NSD NSD