Nagpur: A gang of burglars looted more than Rs 32.40 lakh cash from an Automated Teller Machine (ATM) of State Bank of India (SBI) at Plot No 21, Ingole Nagar, opposite Borkar Hospital, in Hudkeshwar area of Nagpur in the small hours Monday.
The SBI ATM in the city outskirts blew up in flames after the gang broke into the kiosk, dismantled the cash vending machine with gas cutters and decamped with Rs 32 lakh.
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Saturday 01 Feb. 2025
But their free run was cut short after Madhya Pradesh police nabbed the goons in Indore and alerted their Nagpur counterparts on Wednesday. Police suspect the ATM at Ingole Nagar was gutted after intense heat from gas cutters caused a circuit malfunction that triggered a blaze.
Street CCTV footage showed ATM thieves zipping away in a white car at around 1:47 am after the 15-minute heist. SBI authorities, however, are yet to hand over the inside footage to city police.
“There can be clarity on the modus operandi once we scan CCTV footage of the ATM interiors. The camera outside the machine was turned away by the goons to dodge detection and another set of CCTVs at a nearby shop was defunct,” said an Hudkeshwar police official.
Another ATM in the vicinity was left untouched by the gang, which entered Nagpur via Outer Ring Road (ORR) and scouted for an unguarded outlet. SBI’s Ingole Nagar Layout ATM was a sitting duck as police patrols were withdrawn from the area and redeployed for Dussehra, Koradi Devi and Deekshabhoomi events.
Smoke billowing from the ATM alerted passers-by, who sent an SOS to police in the early hours of October 23. Police too assumed that the ATM had caught fire accidentally. SBI officials, who rushed to the site, were also clueless about the heist till their technical team told them about the empty vault.
Rattled by frequent ATM break-ins, Police Commissioner Amitesh Kumar is now writing to concerned authorities on the need to bolster security.
Senior Inspector of Hudkeshwar Police Station Prashant Mane said, cops are being deployed in the desolate places for surveillance, but substantial manpower was withdrawn due to festival bandobast. Reports said, the gang busted by Indore police, also travelled in a white car. Nagpur police have reached Indore to take custody of the accused.
