The safety of your possessions kept in bank lockers is once again in question, with another case of locker theft in Punjab National Bank branch in Chandigarh.

The case was brought to light by city residents- Harminder Singh Mankotia and Vineeta Mankotia in June this year.

The plaintiff, a resident of Sector-20, alleged theft of gold jewellery worth around Rs 9.50 lakh from the held bank locker at Punjab National Bank branch in Sector 22.

"It's a joint locker between my wife Vanita Kumari and me and I had last operated it on May 16," Singh affirmed.

"Gold ornaments worth Rs 9.50 lakh were kept in it. But there's just an empty carrybag now," he added.

The locker was seized and sent for forensic examination to CFSL, Sector 36. The sub-inspector looking into the case, JS Bhullar, confirmed a technical snag in the locker based on the forsenic report.

‘Owner Vinita Mankotia was unable to lock the closet,' he said.

According to RBI guidelines, every bank locker has two keys - one of which is in possession with the account holder (handed when locker is allocated) and other is with the bank. Whenever a locker account is required to be operated by the account-holder(s), an entry is made in the logbook.

A safe deposit locker is located in a vault and is built in accordance with RBI norms 

In India, locker facility is also availed by private players as well. The India Safety Vaults Limited (ISVL) is pioneer of ‘safe deposit lockers' provided by private players in India. It is the largest vault facilities Mumbai & Pune, apart from the Bank of India, Bullion Exchange Branch facility.

Freeda Safety Vaults Limited is another private player in the field, again based in Mumbai.