Naugachhia: Criminals on Monday looted Rs 12 lakh from the employees of a Reliance petrol pump on National Highway 30 here even as senior police officers geared up for special inter-district combing operations to nab gangsters in diara areas of the Ganga and the Kosi.

The disappearance of four volleyball players from two villages in of Naugachhia and the subsequent suspicion that they had been murdered had triggered the police drive.

Deputy inspector-general of police (DIG), Bhagalpur zone, Vikas Vaibhav has been monitoring the combing operations. He toured the riverine belts by boat and returned late on Sunday evening. Thereafter, he told reporters that he had suspended the station house officer of Rangra police station in Naugachhia, A.K. Azad, for failing to arrest diara ganglord Moti Yadav. Police have announced a bounty of Rs 50,000 on Moti Yadav.

Vaibhav scolded the SHOs of Naugachhia and Kharik police stations for failing to control the rising crime graph.

The DIG was, however, unavailable on Monday for comment on the money loot in Naugachhia.

Naugachhia superintendent of police (SP) Sudhir Kumar said: "Motorcycle-borne criminals snatched the amount from two employees of the pump while they were on way to the Naugachhia branch of ICICI Bank to deposit it."

Police sources said around five people were picked up for questioning in Khagaria district in the volleyball players' disappearance case.

A police team, led by Khagaria SDPO Rajan Kumar, conducted raids in the diara areas from where evidences of the purported killing of four youths were recovered earlier.

However, some family members of the four men at Gouripur in Naugachhia alleged on Monday that police had not provided any boat to search the bodies from the riverbed.

"We are searching but how can bodies chopped into small pieces be found from riverbed?" said a senior police officer from Khagaria.

The Naugachhia SP said prime accused Pinku Jha and his accomplices had escaped with their family members.