Three people have been arrested in India after a daring 70m rupees ($800,000; £600,000) heist in which armed men posing as central bank officials robbed an ATM cash van.
On Saturday, police in the southern city of Bengaluru reported that they had cracked the case and recovered 57.6m rupees of the money stolen three days earlier.
Police Commissioner Seemant Kumar Singh indicated that the investigation is on track to locate the remaining funds and mentioned that three suspects had been detained. We are looking for two to three more, he added.
The arrested individuals include Gopal Prasad, an employee of cash transport company CMS, J Xavier, a former CMS worker, and Annappa Naik, a local police constable.
The brazen robbery occurred in broad daylight in the Lalbagh area of Bengaluru. The thieves, masquerading as Reserve Bank of India officers, halted the cash transport vehicle under the pretense of checking paperwork for such a large sum.
The cash custodian and two security guards were ordered into an SUV while one of the gang members took control of the van.
Police noted the gang's tactics included changing vehicles, using fake registration plates, and selecting locations with minimal CCTV coverage to transfer boxes of cash.
A massive search operation was ignited, deploying over 200 police officers across Karnataka and neighboring states, including Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Goa.
Investigators are also looking into possible violations of cash transport regulations by CMS, pointing out that the vans should not regularly follow the same route and schedule to avoid predictability.
