Pune: Sopanbaug's Yash Kapoor (47) was perplexed after he failed to open the locker — held by his family for the past 64 years — despite three-four attempts in the presence of a senior manager on a routine bi-monthly visit to the Punjab National Bank (PNB) branch in Camp around 12.15pm on Sept 6. Kapoor, a general manager with a food processing firm, left for his nearby office after the bank officials told him that they would get representatives of the locker's manufacturer to open it and the process would take three-four days.
To his surprise, the officials told him the same evening to urgently visit them. They told Kapoor that his locker was "mistakenly" broken in a process initiated on behalf of another customer — a 73-year-old former printing press owner from Camp. The latter mistook it for his own locker because of similar reading locker numbers.
Kapoor's locker number was PA 00014. The other customer's locker number was PJ 00014 and it was in the name of his deceased wife, a retired PNB employee. The bank officials told Kapoor that the elderly customer took away gold and diamond ornaments (totally worth Rs2.
66 crore), silver ornaments (worth Rs2.35 lakh) and cash (Rs9.5 lakh) from his locker after it was broken, and a new key was issued to the other customer under the impression that the locker belonged to him.
The senior citizen later gave the ornaments to a jeweller in Camp, who got the same melted. Kapoor reported the matter to the Cantonment police . They cond.