Rourkela: Raghunathpalli police on Wednesday busted an 11-member gang of inter-state ATM looters and recovered Rs 4.2 lakh in cash and other items from them.

The arrested persons are Nishant Raj, 25, Prince Kumar Singh, 21, Raju Kumar Singh, 25, Manjit Paney, 31, Abhimanyu Kumar Raj, 26, Sajan Kumar, 25, Dayanand Kumar Ray alias Choty, 20, Vivek Kumar Ray, 38, Uttam Singh, 24, Babul Kumar Ray, 28 and Manoj Kumar, 32.

The police have also recovered 16 phones, two laptops, 95 ATM cards and 11 blank ATM cards, three skimmer machines, two copy writer magnetic decoders and three four-wheelers from them.

Rourkela police superintendent Uma Shankar Dash said: "We have busted an inter-state gang of ATM looters, who were planning to commit more crimes in the city. All the gang members belonged to either Gaya district in Bihar or Kodarma in Jharkhand. They had been active in Maharastra, Gujarat, UP, Jharkhand, Bihar, MP and Bengal. Besides, they have committed offences in 14 districts in Odisha."

The police were keeping tabs on their movement for some time following intelligence inputs from various sources. The gang used to target mostly the isolated ATMs, situated on the highways. "They had a very simple fundamental in committing the crime. They will target gullible lone people, who are less aware about the technology. They would decamp with his money in the name of helping him. Primary investigation revealed that they were involved in crimes such as ATM card exchange, snatching, swiping as well as using modern technology, which is called skimming, to commit the crime," said Dash.

He said the gang had managed to loot over Rs 1 crore in such fashion and did not elaborate further on their modus operandi as this would hamper investigation. He said: "We are going to contact police stations of other districts and states for their co-operation to unravel the other crimes they were associated with."