A family tragedy': Mahendra Bavishi in Khartoum . The joint director of the safe deposit company robbed in the £60million Hatton Garden gem heist said yesterday that he believes it was an inside job. Mahendra Bavishi, who lives in Sudan, said detectives have asked to put some ‘sensitive’ questions to his British-based son who runs the business, including whether he suspects someone connected to the company or other firms in the same premises had links with criminal gangs. And he said the robbers almost certainly had some inside information because they appeared to know that several CCTV cameras in the building where his firm is based were not working when they broke in. Speaking for the first time about the crime Mr Bavishi, 69, also told of his fury at police for ignoring an alert from a state of the art alarm in the vault while the gang were forcing their way into 72 safe deposit boxes during the Easter holiday. He described the robbery as a ‘tragedy’ for his family after the business had just started to make a small profit following years of losses. Mr Bavishi is a joint director of Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Ltd with eldest son Manish Bavishi, who lives in Kenton, north-west London, and usually runs the business full-time. But when the robbery happened Manish, 38, was on a month-long holiday with his wife and child in Sudan. In his absence, the business was being managed by younger brother Alok, 29. Their downcast father told the Daily Mail: ‘To many this robbery is like something out of a Hollywood fiction film, but to my family it is a tragedy. It is the end of the business my son has worked so hard to build slowly over the last seven years. ‘It was making a loss when he bought it and only first made a profit last year, and even then it was very little. Before then we were relying on loans from banks as we worked to make it a success. Now the business is finished. Who will trust their valuables with us after this?’ Scroll down for video . Caught on CCTV: One of the raiders. Mr Bavisihi said robbers almost certainly had some inside information . It is estimated that anything from £60million to £200million of jewellery and cash was removed from the company’s vaults in London’s diamond district. Mr Bavishi was in China on unrelated business when news broke about the robbery, but rushed back to Sudan to be with his eldest son who was himself frantically trying to arrange a return from Khartoum to the UK with his family, which took several days. He said: ‘The police called Manish on his phone in Sudan to tell him what happened and said we want you to come back to London because there are sensitive issues we want to talk to you about. ‘They told him they wanted to ask him questions that only he could answer about the business. The police want to know from Manish if he suspects someone inside who could have contact with a gang.’ Several retired detectives have already speculated that the gang must have had inside knowledge before sneaking into the block, abseiling down a lift shaft to the underground vault and drilling through a 7ft-thick concrete wall to reach the security boxes. The Hatton Garden Safe Deposit company is in a building which accommodates 60 other businesses. Mr Bavishi said: ‘There must be suspicion on everyone who worked in that building.’ It is estimated that anything from £60million to £200million of jewellery and cash was removed from the company’s vaults in London’s diamond district over the Easter weekend . The robbers set off an intruder alarm just after midnight on Good Friday and the Southern Monitoring Alarm Company contacted the Metropolitan Police’s Central Communications Command. Police recorded the call, but graded it so that ‘no police response was deemed to be required’. ‘It is incredible that the police did not act on this,’ said Mr Bavishi. ‘The police knew in advance that it would be closed over Easter so they must have realised nobody was meant to be in the vaults.’ Mr Bavishi, who was born in Sudan from Indian heritage, is a well-respected businessman in the North African country and a former president of the Khartoum Rotary Club. He runs the Manish Agency, which imports electrical goods to Sudan. Police are examining startling similarities between the Hatton Garden heist and a bank raid in Berlin two years ago. One line of inquiry is that a crew of specialist Eastern European thieves may have travelled to the UK for the raid at Easter. The operation was the mirror image of one on the vault of the Volksbank in Steglitz, south-west Berlin, in January 2013. Thieves made off with diamonds, gold and silver worth more than £8.3million from 294 safety deposit boxes after drilling through 80cm – around two and a half feet – of reinforced concrete. The gang spent weeks digging a tunnel from a rented parking space to reach the walls of the underground vault. They then drilled four massive holes in the wall after the bank closed on a Friday afternoon. The wooden boards used to construct the tunnel came from Poland, and bottles of Polish beer were left behind. In both the London and Berlin raids police suspect an insider passed on vital information that enabled the thieves to work out how to beat security systems. Police in Germany obtained DNA samples of some members of the gang, but they have never been traced. The Berlin bank is still negotiating with more than 100 deposit box owners who did not have theft insurance.
Mahendra Bavishi is joint director of Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Ltd.
His son Manish, 38, who lives in London, usually runs business full-time.
69-year-old said robbers almost certainly had some inside information.
Mr Bavishi expressed his fury at police for ignoring an alert from a state of the art alarm in the vault.