Anuradhapura Police Headquarters officers said that a thief or a group of thieves who came to steal money from a state bank in Anuradhapura town yesterday, abandoned the robbery and fled the scene when the bank’s alarm system got activated.
Police said that during the attempted robbery, the thieves who had broken into the bank premises had smashed a safe and tried to steal money after entering the building by removing a part of the its roof, but the attempt had failed. The bank is located near the Anuradhapura Public Shopping Complex.
Police said that the alarm system of the bank had suddenly been activated when one or several persons descended from the roof of the bank building with the help of a rope and broke one of its safes with the help of a grinder and a knife. There was no money in that safe.
A statement made by a woman who lives behind the bank mentioned that she had seen a man running behind the bank with a bag hanging on his back when she woke up due to the constant sound of the bank’s alarm.
A Police officer said that this state-owned bank had been broken into several times by thieves in recent times.
Several police teams are conducting further investigations on the instructions of Thilina Hewapathirana, SSP in charge of the Anuradhapura Division, in an attempt to arrest the person or a group of persons who had broken into the bank and tried to rob it.
Sashini Madushani