How Bengaluru Police Cracked the ATM Van Heist After a 54-Hour Chase

Bengaluru Police Commissioner Seemant Kumar Singh claimed on Saturday that three men had been arrested in the 7.11 crore daylight robbery of an ATM cash refill van.

Singh claimed that the arrests were the result of a massive man hunt that involved over 200 policemen.

Eleven teams were also constituted, which attracted 11 personal investigators, and 2 ACPs of the South Division and six officers of the CCB, who were closely supervised by the top management.

Also Read: Sania Mirza Opens Up on Post-Retirement Struggles, Says She Cried Missing Her Routine

What was the robbery?

A robbery on November 19 in Bengaluru, in which an ATM cash van was hijacked by a group of unidentified men pretending to be the officials of the RBI, and then drove away with almost ₹7 crore, was reported by the police as possibly the largest robbery the city has ever witnessed.

The robbery occurred as a truck transporting cash belonging to one of the branches of a private bank in JP Nagar was driven by a CMS Info Systems.

The gang arrived in a car with a Government of India sticker, pulled up the van on the excuse of checking documents and then robbed the staff and the cash into their own car.

The workers were subsequently thrown off at Dairy Circle with the robbers making away with the cash.

Research through the interstate, much in doubt.

They were spread all over Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and some even followed leads to Goa.

More than 30 individuals were interrogated with investigators trying to assemble technical leads, field intelligence, video and vehicle movement data by CCTV.

The effort paid off quickly. The suspects and the vehicles were identified within the initial 24 hours by the police.

Also Read: Railways Crosses 1 Billion Tonne Freight Mark by November 19 in FY 25-26: Ministry

The three suspects were arrested in less than 54 hours and in the ensuing six hours 5.76 crores of the embezzled money were recovered.

The getaway cars were also located and confiscated. According to the police, the gang had a total of six to eight individuals, who planned the robbery together and carried it out, and the distribution and transportation of the stolen cash thereafter.

Who were arrested?

Among the people who have been arrested are a constable of the Govindarajanagar police station, former employee of CMS Infosystems and the cash refill vehicle in-charge.

By Friday, investigators had started to have the feeling that an insider was involved, when mobile tower records of the robbery area showed that the constable was talking to the former CMS employee several times during the robbery.

Their phone records also indicated that they had talked a lot in the days prior to the robbery. The former employee had just quit his job and got to be very familiar with the constable according to the officers.

The other lead was the getaway vehicle which was used by the gang and was later discovered abandoned in the neighbourhood of Tirupati in Chittoor district.

According to police, the investigation is still in progress since there is an attempt to locate the rest of the group members.

Also Read: At G20 Summit, PM Modi Calls for Global Front Against Drug-Terror Nexus