Three people have been arrested in India after a daring 70m rupees ($800,000; £600,000) heist in which armed men posing as central bank officials robbed an ATM cash van.
On Saturday, police in the southern city of Bengaluru said they had cracked the case and recovered 57.6m 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 later told the BBC that three suspects had been detained, adding, We are looking for two to three more.
Those arrested include Gopal Prasad, an employee of the cash transport company CMS, J Xavier, a former CMS worker, and Annappa Naik, a local police constable.
The robbery occurred 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 such a large amount of cash.
The vehicle's cash custodian and two security guards were instructed to get into an SUV, while one gang member took control of the cash van, police stated.
Investigators reported that the gang changed vehicles, used fake registration plates, and chose locations with minimal CCTV coverage to facilitate the transfer of cash boxes.
A massive manhunt began on Wednesday, deploying over 200 police officers across Karnataka and neighboring states: Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Goa.
Detectives are now looking into the role of CMS and potential violations of transport guidelines, as Singh noted, The vans should not follow the same route and timing repeatedly to avoid predictability.
