Three people have been arrested in India after a daring 70 million rupees ($800,000) heist in which armed men posing as central bank officials robbed an ATM cash van.
On Saturday, police in the southern city of Bengaluru announced they had cracked the case and recovered 57.6 million rupees of the money stolen three days earlier.
Our investigation is on track to get the remaining amount, Bengaluru police commissioner Seemant Kumar Singh told reporters.
Singh confirmed to the BBC 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 robbery took place in broad daylight in the Lalbagh area of Bengaluru. The thieves pretended to be officers of the Reserve Bank of India, stopping the transport vehicle to check the paperwork for the large amount of cash.
The vehicle's cash custodian and two security guards were instructed to enter an SUV, while one gang member took control of the cash van, police reported.
To evade capture, the gang reportedly changed vehicles and used fake registration plates, choosing locations with minimal CCTV coverage for transferring the cash.
A massive search operation was launched on Wednesday, deploying over 200 police officers across Karnataka and neighboring states including Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Goa.
Detectives are also examining the role of the cash transport company, CMS, and potential breaches of cash transfer guidelines. Singh noted that vehicles should not consistently follow the same routes to avoid predictability, which can lead to robberies like this one.
