Meghalaya woman hides inside bank for 3 nights, held for robbery bid

Shillong, June 30 In a bizarre incident, the Meghalaya police have arrested a 40-year-old woman on charges of attempting to rob a local bank after she hid herself inside the bank for three nights, police said on Wednesday.

An official said the police arrested Isabella Myrboh on Wednesday a day after she was discovered in a deserted room of the Meghalaya Rural Bank's Bishnupur branch in Shillong. She will be produced before a local court after spending some time in a quarantine centre and when her Covid-19 test report is found to be negative.

"The woman was found in a deserted room in a disoriented, weak condition when the bank branch opened on Monday after a two-day holiday on Saturday and Sunday."

According to the bank employees, she had come to the branch on June 25 to deposit some cash and managed to hide inside before the bank closed on Friday afternoon," an officer of Shillong's Laban police station told on condition of anonymity.

The police and bank employees also discovered that the woman had planned to stay overnight with some puffed rice, soft drinks including ORS (oral rehydration solution) to sustain her before she came out from hiding.

Among other items the woman, a resident of the city's New Kench's Trace area under Laban police station, carried were a hammer and a handsaw.

The police and the bank employees said that the woman might have thought that she could come out from the bank the next morning as she might have been unaware that the bank would be closed for more days than she had thought.

"She did not call for help during the several nights she spent inside the locked building though there are houses adjoining the bank," the police official said, adding that the woman partially damaged the CCTV cameras and tried to take some cash from a counter.

The bank did not have sufficient drinking water to sustain her for more than 24 hours.

Some local organisations in Shillong have urged the authorities to deal with the case with sensitivity.

Local people told the police that the woman has been running an eatery shop but due to the Covid pandemic induced lockdown and various restrictions, it affected her business along with others.

The family members of Isabella said they had no knowledge about her "misadventure".

"We don't support her act," a member of her family said.

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