Bhubaneswar, April 17: Three persons who had looted cash worth Rs 60 lakh from the cash van of a nationalised bank near Tangi, 75km from here, in February last year were arrested today by Khurda police.

The police have seized Rs 10.4 lakh in cash and a country-made pistol from them.

On February 3 last year, armed goons looted the cash while the money stashed in two trunks was being transported from the bank's Khurda branch to Balugaon branch. The criminals had also fired at the security guards.

The accused were identified as Suraj Patnaik, 32, the mastermind in the crime, Manoj Dalai, 20, and Dipak Kumar Swain, 22. They come from various parts of Khurda district.

Superintendent of police, Khurda, Dilip Das said that the accused had fled after committing the crime.

Imposter held

A man, who posed as an official of the Airports Authority of India (AAI), was today detained for allegedly duping a youth on the pretext of providing a job. The impostor Santosh Sethi, 32, was arrested following a complaint filed by Bikash Dash, a native of Ganjam district.

Police said that Sethi, a native of Balipatana, had taken an advance of Rs 30,000 from Dash promising him a storekeeper's job at Biju Patnaik Airport. "While he took the advance last month, he had demanded another Rs 8,000 from the aspirant. Sethi had asked the youth to come to the Biju Patnaik Airport today to collect the money," said a police official.

The matter came in to light after Dash, along with other four aspirants, reached the Biju Patnaik International Airport to meet Sethi. Soon, they entered into a heated engagement, which drew the attention of Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) personnel on duty at the airport.

The jawans found a writing pad having the name and logo of the AAI from Sethi's possession.

The police said that Sethi had downloaded the logo and pasted it on the writing pad. However, the pad mentioned the head office as Dubai. The police suspected that Sethi had also taken money from others promising them jobs in aviation and other sectors.

"He was arrested under sections 420 (cheating), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 471(using as genuine a forged document) of the Indian Penal Code," said inspector in-charge of Airfield police station Rashmi Ranjan Sahoo.

Director of Biju Patnaik International Airport Sharad Kumar said that no recruitment of the AAI ever took place through a broker.

"Aspirants should not rely on brokers and the vacancies of AAI are advertised on its website," Kumar said.