Bengaluru police have arrested six people, including a constable, in connection with the ₹7.11-crore ATM cash van robbery in the city and recovered ₹6.29 crore.

Briefing reporters on the heist, where a gang posing as RBI officials decamped with the money, Bengaluru police commissioner Seemant Kumar Singh said the accused were nabbed after a multi-city manhunt involving over 200 personnel.

Lauding the police team that cracked the case, Singh said the accused were detained within 54 hours and part of the stolen cash was recovered within 60 hours. He added that the accused and the vehicles used were identified by the end of the first 24 hours of the crime.

Singh announced a cash reward of ₹5 lakh for the team and said efforts were on to arrest the remaining accused and retrieve the rest of the money.

Among the six arrested, three have been identified as constable Annappa Naik, J. Xavier, a former employee of the CMS Info Systems Pvt Ltd, and the company’s fleet manager Gopal Prasad.

The gang is estimated to consist of around six to eight persons, spread across planning, execution and post-crime movement of cash,
he added.

“The crime displayed meticulous planning and was executed with zero operational errors. The gang members did not use mobile phones during the operation and communicated in multiple languages to mislead us.

“Multiple vehicles were used in the heist and their number plates and identifiers were frequently changed,” Singh told reporters in Bengaluru.

Sources said the gang had planned the robbery for three months. They surveyed the cash van’s route and chose a stretch without CCTV cameras.

The probe team had 11 police inspectors, two assistant commissioners of police and six inspectors from the central crime branch who were supervised by senior officers, including Singh.

Technical and field leads were pursued in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala and Goa.

It became difficult for the probe team to track down the stolen cash as the currency notes were not serialised by the issuing bank. The police also blamed the media for revealing information that hindered the preliminary
investigation.

On November 19, unidentified men posing as RBI officials intercepted an ATM cash van and decamped with ₹7.11 crore.

The incident occurred when the vehicle belonging to CMS Info Systems was transporting cash from a private bank branch in J.P. Nagar in the city.

The robbers arrived in a car with a Government of India sticker, intercepted the van claiming they needed to verify documents, and forced the staff into their vehicle along with the cash. They later dropped the staff near Dairy Circle and fled with the money.