Nearly 59kg gold pledged as loan collateral was stolen from the Mangoli branch of Canara Bank in Karnataka’s Vijayapura district in one of the biggest gold heists ever reported in India.
What has alarmed the police is the delay in detection, as the robbery took place between May 23 and 25, coinciding with the weekend, yet it was discovered only on May 26 by a part-time sweeper who found that the locks to the locker room were broken. The bank manager filed an FIR with the police on the same day.
An internal audit by the bank confirmed that gold worth ₹52 crore and ₹5.2 lakh in cash were stolen. The police claimed that eight robbers were part of the team that escaped with the valuables.
“Robbers decamped with the lockers in the rear room of the bank. Bank officials have given a statement that the CCTV was not functioning between May 23 and May 25. The safety alarm was also found to be switched off. The robbers allegedly opened the lockers with a duplicate set of keys,” said Laxman Nimbargi, the police superintendent
of Vijayapura.
The incident has posed a grave challenge to the police team as they are not ruling out an inside job. “The police are working hard and the robbers will be caught soon. Eight teams have been formed to investigate the case. The accused will be arrested and the case will be brought to a logical conclusion,” the SP said.
The robbers also placed a black doll near a broken window, probably with the intention of throwing cops off track with suggestions of black magic.
Karnataka has witnessed a series of bank robberies in the past year. In October 2024, six robbers fled with 17kg of gold from a State Bank of India branch in Davanagere. They were arrested in March.
