Masked men shoot bank cashier, loot Rs.1 million

Raipur, March 28 (IANS) Four masked men shot dead a bank cashier in full public view in Chhattisgarh Wednesday and fled with his bag containing Rs.1 million, police said.

The incident took place in Gorela-Pendra area in Bilaspur district, some 210 km from Raipur, when Rajendra Prasad Mishra, cashier of a rural bank, came out of a local State Bank of India branch with Rs.1 million in cash to pay his rural bank customers.

"The four masked men were waiting for the cashier and when Mishra came out from the SBI branch with money, they fired several bullets at him from close range," Nagvanshi, Gorela-Pendra police station in charge, told local reporters.

He said the cashier died on the spot. The robbers fled with the bag containing the cash and were believed to have sneaked into Madhya Pradesh territory which is barely a few kilometres away from the incident site, he added.

The Chhattisgarh Police have sought help of the Madhya Pradesh Police in a bid to track down the robbers but no arrest was made till late evening.