Dec. 17: A bank’s employees and customers were all locked up in its vault as six men stuffed Rs 35 lakh into two gunny bags and walked away.

A clerk who was late to work was puzzled seeing the Central Bank branch in Burdwan town locked 45 minutes after it should have opened. Then he saw the collapsible gate’s keys lying in front.

Raju Das walked in and saw the lights on and uncapped pens, but not a soul. He followed the muffled voices he heard and arrived in front of the vault. There were some 18 people inside the 9ftX7ft room, still scared to scream for help.

The robbers had left the key to this door in front of it as well.

Manager Asish Majumder, who was among those locked up, said the first thing the goons did was snap the telephone lines and the alarm. “The employees and the three customers present were made to kneel on the floor with their hands on their eyes and their phones were taken away.”

Three men went into Majumder’s chamber and demanded the vault’s keys at gunpoint. “I told them they were with our senior manager, who was yet to come. They slapped me, hurled abuses and threatened to shoot me,” Majumder said.

Senior manager N.B. Lodh walked in without realising what was going on. Once inside, the goons surrounded him. “They put a revolver to my head and asked for the keys in Hindi. I gave it to them,” he said.

Central Bank’s main branch in the town works in two shifts — 8am to 1.30pm and 2pm to 8pm — and does not have a guard in the first half. It is housed on the first floor of a two-storey market complex near GT Road, 90km from Calcutta, and most shops were shut when the robbers came at 8.25.

The bank is only half a kilometre from the district police headquarters. Superintendent R. Rajsekharan said: “It appears to be the job of professional bank robbers.”