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Bank of India in Paris robbed

Ranvir Nayar in Paris

Two armed and masked men robbed the Bank of India in the heart of Paris and walked off with nearly 65,000 French francs (about nearly half-a-million rupees).

Bank Director Ashok Mahajan told rediff.com that the two men, who were wearing skin masks on their faces and carrying pistols, entered the office on the first floor of a building opposite the famous Paris Opera at 11.30 am and declared a hold-up.

"We were all taken by surprise. There were three-four customers also in the bank at the time. The masked men went over to the cashier and asked her to put all the cash in their sack. Luckily, there was not much cash in the office. They turned on a customer who had come to remit his money to India and robbed him of his 10,000 Francs.

"It was definitely a professional job. Because, in less than five minutes, they were out and had disappeared in the crowds below,'' says Mahajan.

The director says the losses could have been much greater but for the confusion caused by the language problem.

"We can't speak French... When they entered, they asked everyone to lie on the floor, but nobody did because we did not understand them. Then they wanted the keys to the bank safe, but as they saw that we could not understand them and that, as time passed, people from neighbouring offices were noticing something amiss, the robbers decided to flee,'' Mahajan said.

Mahajan was critical of the police response to the situation. He says a buzzer at the cashier's desk, which sounds an alarm at the bank's security agency office, which calls the police, was pressed. The button is pressed only during a hold-up. But the police took nearly an hour to come, by which time everything was over, says Mahajan.

The police reportedly told the bankers that since the matter was not a serious one, they had not responded earlier.

"If an armed robbery is not a serious incident, then what is? They could shot and hurt or even killed people here. They could have taken hostages. Everyone was so scared... Yet the police don't see this as a serious incident,'' asks an enraged bank employee. And going by the way the police is reacting, Mahajan has almost given up hope of recovering the money.

He says this is the first time in the 25-year history of the Bank of India in Paris that such an incident has occurred. He says the bank largely deals in cash only in transactions involving remittances to India, amounting to nearly 3 million French Francs every month.

Mahajan says he does not suspect the involvement of any employee in the incident. According to him, many casual visitors visit the bank every day. The robbers could have also thus visited the bank and surveyed it before staging the actual hold-up, he said.

Now, the bank is strengthening its security, installing video surveillance cameras, Mahajan says.

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