Varanasi: UP STF on Saturday arrested three accused in the multi-crore Bank of Maharashtra loot in Hazaribagh district of Jharkhand, with the seizure of over 900 gram gold and Rs 20 lakh cash.After clues pointed to east UP criminals, Jharkhand police sought help. Senior STF officials tasked Varanasi field units led by inspectors Amit Srivastava and Anil Singh. Call records, CCTV footage, and informer inputs helped the STF track the Hazaribagh robbers from Singhpur bypass under Sarnath police station area.Police said the accused were identified as Mohd Afzal of Nevada, Bihar, Pankaj Singh alias Raunak of Gorakhpur and Saurabh Yadav of Mau. Over 912 grams of gold, cash amounting to Rs 20 lakh, six mobile phones and an SUV were seized from their SUV.STF’s initial probe found that Mohd Afzal murdered a Kolkata coal trader over trade rivalry and went to jail. There he met Pankaj, Dashrath Mahto, Babu Raja alias Sidhrath, Sohail alias Faizal, Sunil Pandit, and others. After his release post-2012, the gang began targeting banks in planned robberies.On April 24, Afzal and his gang looted Bank of Maharashtra’s Barhi branch in Hazaribagh after a multi-day recce. Earlier, the gang stole 36 kg of gold from a Durgapur gold loan firm in 2013. Between 2015 and 2022, they looted over 50 kg of gold in Kolkata, Gaya, Patna, and other places.
