State Bank of India's Marathahalli branch lost Rs 19 lakhs due to server problem that was faced across the nation. A box containing a sum of Rs 19 lakhs went missing from the cashier's cabin and left the city police in distress.

The sudden disappearance of a box containing the money, which was meant to be loaded into the bank's ATM, crated havoc at the SBI's branch, near MEG hospital in Marathahalli. The box vanished form the cashier's cabin sometime between 10.30 am and 11 am on October 6th.

According to the city police the bank's cashiers were responsible for not attending the box and leaving it in an unlocked room.

While complaining about the matter, Bank manager Keshav Rao said that there was a server connection problem across the country for an hour between 10am and 11am. SBI's host server, which was analogous to an Internet service provider (ISP) and an access for the customers to all the various ATM networks, was down for almost an hour.

Martin Alvaris, ACP said, "At 10.30 am, the cashier removed the box containing Rs 19 lakh from the vault so it could be loaded into the ATM machine. However, as the server was not working, they couldn't do it. The box was kept in the cabin of one of the cashiers." The money that was to be fed into the ATM was lost because some of the bank staffers, including the cashiers, took a refreshment break as the work was not possible due to the server being down.

When the staff returned the server problem was fixed and therefore they decided to load the money into the ATM. However, the box with the money could not be found. "They searched the entire office but in vain," said Alvaris.

To this the bank manager informed the police, who pressed the dog squad into action. "Though there were over 25 customers in the bank, they couldn't have got into the cashier's cabin as the entry is from inside. We interrogated all the bank staff, and they weren't allowed to move out of the bank till evening," said a police official.

The missing box contained 50 currency notes of Rs1,000, 2,000 notes of Rs500, and 4,000 notes of Rs100.