Sensational gold heist in Bangalore

The Bangalore police yesterday intensified its investigation into the sensational gold heist from a reputed jewellery shop in the City on Saturday, which saw a four-member gang loot 36 kgs of the precious metal valued around Rs 35 million at gunpoint.

The pistol-wielding gang turned up at Chemmanur Jewellers’ outlet on Kammanahalli Main Road minutes after the shop was opened, threatened the nine employees and wiped the place clean of all its gold in a filmy-style operation that lasted barely 15 minutes.

The daring heist, which has been described as the biggest jewellery robbery in Bangalore, has been captured on the closed circuit television cameras installed inside the store. With the police making the tape available to the media, the robbery was relayed into the homes of people in the State.

Four youths aged around 25 to 28 years, attired in expensive trousers and T-shirts, enter the shop pretending to be customers, conversing in Kannada, English and Hindi. Even as the nine employees, including four women, are arranging the jewel display boxes, the robbers whip out their pistols, hidden in their trousers.

Before the shocked employees could react, the robbers herd them into the locker room at gun point and snatch their mobiles from them. Even as one of them stands guard, the rest of them quickly begin emptying the gold jewellery into a bag. One of them even broke open the cash counter and lifted around Rs 350,000 from it. The robbers do not touch any silver articles kept in the store.

Before leaving the place and fleeing in a waiting car, the gang damages the four closed-circuit television cameras. However, the cameras have managed to capture the entire crime, upto the point of the being damaged, police said.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Gopal Hosur told reporters that the culprits will be nabbed soon with the help of the clues they had left behind. Not only have the robbers been caught on camera, they were not even wearing gloves. The forensic experts have lifted the finger print samples.

“It is a pre-planned attack. They might have visited the place several times and studied the situation. But, we are not yet sure whether the weapons were real”, Hosur said. “Going by the video footage and the body language of the robbers, it does not look like they carried revolvers. An original revolver is heavy. These guys were holding the weapons easily and from this we can make out that it could be toy pistols”, Deputy Commissioner of Police (East) B K Singh told reporters.

Meanwhile, the police have fanned out in all parts of the City looking for suspects. Five teams of senior officers have been formed to investigate the crime. Teams have also been dispatched to different parts of Karnataka and neighbouring states, where thieves usually dispose stolen gold at throwaway prices.