Police inspect the ATM cash van robbed of ₹7.11 crore after a gang posed as RBI officials in Bengaluru (Photo: X | @kaankit)
Bengaluru: It was certainly a plot out of a movie that a gang of six planned and executed a heist where they robbed an ATM cash van off ₹ 7.11 crore in broad daylight in the busy Bengaluru streets on Wednesday.
According to the police, the CMS, a leading company that offers cash management services including ATM cash filling and cash van services had sent one of their vans to the HDFC Bank situated in JP Nagar where hard cash of Rs 7.11 Cr was loaded into it and the van was supposed to carry the cash to the CMS company from where the cash should be further carried to fill the ATM kiosks.
When the cash van reached near the Ashoka Pillar Circle near Southend Circle in Jayanagar, the driver of the cash van sensed that a Toyota Innova was following the cash van for quite some time. By the time the cash van occupants - a driver Vinod Kumar, two gunmen Rajanna and Thammaiah along with custodian Aftab realised that they were being followed, the Innova waylaid the cash van and five to six men got down from the MUV and they claimed that they were from the RBI's Central Tax Department officials. They told the bank official that they need to see the documents that they were carrying along with the boxes of cash they were ferrying. They then confiscated the cash van occupants' mobile phones amd other gadgets, told the gunmen to leave their guns inside the cash van and go and get inside the Innova. The gang of men pretending to be officials from central agency (RBI) got into the ATM cash van and drove with the cash van's driver Vinod Kumar asking him to follow the Innova car that was heading in front of them follow. They had told the cash van occupants that they were taking the cash van to the police station along with everyone.
When the Innova reached near Lal Bagh, it stopped and the driver dumped its occupants - the custodian and the two gunmen and proceeded towards the Diary Circle flyover, the police said. Upon reaching the top ramp of the flyover the cash van stopped and the men shifted the cash from the boxes into bags they they were carrying and put them into the Innova vehicle that had also stopped. They then fled away with the cash leaving behind the cash van driver Vinod Kumar along with his cash van, the police stated. The gang chose the upper ramp of the flyover as there would be no pedestrians and there are no CCTv cameras installed atop of the flyover, the police added.
Only after some time the abandoned custodian, the gunmen amd the driver realised that they were duped after which they somehow managed to inform their senior staffers at the CMS Company. Everything happened in a swift manner between 12.20 pm and 1.30 pm, police sources said.
The company staffers arrived at the spot and took the cash van occupants to the jurisdictional Siddapura police station amd lodged a complaint. Meanwhile, the cops rushed to the spot along with Forensic experts and conducted their investigation. The Forensic experts were seen extracting fingerprints from the cash van that was parked on top of the flyover.
Around five teams were formed by both the South and Southeast Division of police who started analysing the CCTv footage from the HDFC Bank in JP Nagar, and near the Ashoka Pillar Circle and the Dairy Circle flyover and collected technical evidence.
Police sources told The Daily Guardian that they are not ruling out the role of insiders from the CMS Company and started interrogating the driver of the cash van. "We have definite clues about the accused and we will apprehend them at the earliest," said a senior police officer. City Police Commissioner Seemanth Kumar Singh visited the Siddapura police station amd took stock of the situation and then proceeded towards Ashoka Pillar Circle amd the Dairy Circle where he inspected the cash van. A case of robbery has been registered amd the police are investigating further.
