Armed men posing as officials from India's central bank have robbed a vehicle transporting 70m rupees ($800,000; £600,000) in the southern state of Karnataka, police say.
A massive operation has been launched to find the men who robbed the van in the heart of Bengaluru city in daylight.
The robbery occurred on Wednesday afternoon. Six men in an SUV stopped a cash transport van on a busy road as it was moving money between bank branches, Bengaluru police commissioner Seemant Kumar Singh told the BBC.
The van was carrying a driver, a cash custodian, and two armed security guards.
Mr. Singh states that the robbers told the people in the van that they were officials from the Reserve Bank of India and needed to verify if they had the correct documents to transport such a huge amount of money.
The gang ordered the cash custodian and guards to leave their weapons in the van and enter the SUV, while the driver was instructed to continue driving with the cash, police said.
The SUV followed the cash van for a few kilometers before the gang forced the driver out of the van, made the cash custodian and guards exit the SUV, transferred the cash at gunpoint, and fled.
Due to limited CCTV coverage in the area, police are investigating whether the gang used multiple vehicles in their operation. The cash transportation service has filed a police complaint.
The SUV used in the heist displayed a fake number plate and a sticker indicating it was from the Government of India, a police official shared anonymously. Additionally, authorities are looking into whether any employees of the cash transportation company were involved.
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah announced that police have recovered the SUV used in the robbery. However, Home Minister G Parameshwara noted that the escape vehicle remains unclear.
It was verified that they changed vehicles and moved the money, he informed reporters, expressing confidence that the police would resolve the case swiftly, akin to their success with recent high-profile bank heists in Karnataka.
In a separate heist earlier this year, gold worth 532.6m rupees was stolen from a Vijayapura district bank. Since then, police have recovered 39kg of the stolen gold and arrested 15 people, including two former employees.
