Two of the thefts followed the same professional pattern: cameras blinded, alarms cut, and the cash chest opened with a welding torch. Representative image: iStock
How police cracked 3 daring ATM robberies in Chennai suburbs
Multiple gangs from various states leave police puzzled, with some gang members not traced yet
Three ATM robberies spread across two weeks on the western and northern edges of Chennai have left banks and police stations shaken. From Somangalam to Gummidipoondi, over Rs 32 lakh were stolen.
Two of the thefts followed the same modus operandi (MO): cameras blinded, alarms cut, and the cash chest opened with a welding torch. The third one was even more daring. The thieves stole a funeral van from a cremation ground, lifted an entire ATM off a highway kiosk and smashed it open beside a canal.
Tamil Nadu police cracked two of the cases using CCTV trails, a recovered getaway car, mobile-phone signals, interstate alerts and a crucial arrest of persons from West Bengal and Jaipur. The third is still being tied to the same web of suspects.
First strike
According to Kancheepuram Range DIG G Shashank Sai, the first strike came in the early hours of August 25 at an ICICI Bank ATM in Puduper village near Somangalam, on the Sriperumbudur-Kundrathur Road in Kancheepuram district. The kiosk stood in a commercial complex with no night watchman.
Between 2:45 am and 4 am, a gang disconnected the alarm and camera wires, sprayed a chemical on the lens, and used a crowbar and gas-welding equipment to cut open the vault. They stole about Rs 9-10 lakh from a machine that had been loaded with cash only the previous evening.
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The cameras were still linked to the bank’s Mumbai control room, so an alarm did go off. Somangalam police were alerted while the robbery was underway, but the men had already fled by the time officers arrived. Investigators later found a bag with the disconnected alarm and camera wires. One suspect appeared on CCTV with his face covered.
Vehicle trail
Speaking to The Federal, Shashank Sai said the police cracked the Somangalam case by chasing the vehicle, not just the faces. The gang came in a black car, stripped its original number plate and fitted a plate stolen from another vehicle parked nearby.
The same evening, the car was spotted in Telangana. Police tried to stop it at a toll plaza. The occupants brandished a handgun, threatened the police and sped away. The car disappeared after a long-distance chase.
Tambaram police special teams later recovered the abandoned vehicle from a forested stretch in Telangana. The trail then pointed north towards Haryana and Mumbai. The breakthrough came when Jaipur’s Vaishali Nagar police arrested a northern-state youth, Pawan Kumar, in a separate pending ATM case. Somangalam officers interrogated him and he admitted he had been at the Puduper kiosk with four others. Those four men are still missing. Police took Pawan Kumar into custody after court formalities in Jaipur.
Second strike
Two days later, on August 27, the same MO surfaced at Gummidipoondi in Tamil Nadu's Tiruvallur district. A customer walking into an Axis Bank ATM on the bypass at Ma Po Si Nagar found the machine cut open. About Rs 12 lakh had been loaded two days earlier, of which Rs 11.5 lakh was gone.
The gang had sprayed black paint or a chemical on the cameras, disabled the alarm and used a welding machine on the cash chest. They also tried the Indian Overseas Bank ATM in the next building and failed. SIPCOT police called in forensic and fingerprint teams and began pulling highway, shop and toll-plaza footage.
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Because the style matched Somangalam almost move for move — unmanned suburban kiosk, camera spray, industrial cutter — officers suspected the same interstate crew and sent special teams to northern States. No separate named arrest has been announced yet in the Gummidipoondi file. Police are now asking whether the men caught in the third case also took part in this one.
Hearse getaway
The third robbery, on September 5, was the most theatrical. In the predawn dark, a private Hitachi white-label ATM on the Poonamallee-Tiruvallur highway at Mettu Kandigai, Kudapakkam, near Vellavedu, simply vanished.
The kiosk had no working camera or burglar alarm. A customer later found only an empty bay.
DIG Shashank Sai said a seven-member gang (reportedly from West Bengal) had spent nearly a month checking out ATMs around Chennai and had surveyed this particular kiosk at least five times. They stole a hearse parked with the key inside — local police say from a cremation ground near West Tambaram’s Kishkinta Road, but other accounts mention the roadside at Naduveerpattu because they believed a funeral vehicle would not be stopped.
They loaded the entire machine onto the van and drove away. About 10 km on, near the Krishna Canal on the Papansathiram-Ukkottai road, they broke the ATM into two and took the cash — estimates vary from around Rs 12 lakh to a very specific Rs 12,54,700.
The gang then abandoned the smashed machine and the hearse and fled on three two-wheelers. Police later found the van abandoned near Mevalurkuppam, Sriperumbudur. Vellavedu police used sniffer dogs and forensic experts at the empty kiosk.
Three arrested
Five special teams were formed under Avadi Deputy Commissioner Vinoth Santharam. Officers examined footage from nearly 300 cameras along possible escape routes and analysed mobile-phone signals. Broken ATM parts and the stolen hearse gave them a vehicle trail and proved the funeral van had been taken from the Tambaram side.
After a 10-day hunt that took teams into northern and neighbouring states, three West Bengal men were arrested: Sameem, also called Sameer, aged 36; Sarbar Khan, also named Sarfar or Masoom, aged 53; and Rasool, aged 28-30. Police said they were traced to Kerala, with one mention of Bengaluru.
Police seized about Rs 2 lakh and the tools used in the robbery. Four other members of the seven-man gang remain absconding. Initial questioning showed Sarbar Khan already faces a pending firearms case in Delhi. Officers are now asking the trio whether they were also behind the Somangalam and Gummidipoondi robberies. It is not yet clear whether this is a larger syndicate stretching from Rajasthan to Haryana to West Bengal or they all acted independently.
Same crime wave?
Police are treating the three strikes as one suburban crime wave even though the last job looked different. Somangalam and Gummidipoondi bear the stamp of a welding crew that blinds cameras and cuts the vault. Kudapakkam was a lift-and-smash operation by a West Bengal gang that had cased its target for weeks.
The common ground is clear: lonely roadside kiosks, night or predawn timing, interstate suspects, and the decision to defeat the machine itself rather than wait for a customer.
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Vellavedu, Somangalam, SIPCOT and Tambaram teams are still mapping the accused men’s earlier cases and any common handler. Until the four Somangalam absconders and the four remaining hearse-gang members are caught, officers say the ATM belt on Chennai’s fringe is not fully safe. Banks have been told to restore cameras, alarms and night watch at isolated kiosks.
Border escape
What makes these robberies especially striking is not only the cash taken, but the geography the gangs chose. They looked for machines standing near Tamil Nadu’s borders, often without a night watchman, on lonely highways and bypass roads.
The gang struck at unmanned kiosks, loaded the cash, and slipped across into Andhra Pradesh or Telangana before local police could close the net. They assumed the police of the state where the crime took place would hunt them; the police of the neighbouring state would not treat the chase as their own. That is why Somangalam, Gummidipoondi and other fringe kiosks became targets.
Shashank Sai, IPS said most of the men behind the welding-style robberies are from Haryana and have ATM crime records.
Their MO is professional: two days before the strike, they case the kiosk. They spray the CCTV cameras, then wait and watch. Do bank officials notice? Does anyone come to clean the lens or reset the alarm? Only after they are sure the booth is still unguarded do they return with cutters and carry out the robbery.
Two separate gangs
The Jaipur arrest of Pawan Kumar gave some clues. When Tamil Nadu teams questioned him, several hidden details came out. According to what he told police, and as DIG Sai later explained, two separate groups were operating on Tamil Nadu ATMs, not one single crew moving from spot to spot.
The gang that robbed the Somangalam ICICI machine did not necessarily cut open the Gummidipoondi Axis Bank ATM the next night. The first gang, the officer said, went to the Gummidipoondi kiosk the same day as the Somangalam job and only sprayed the cameras. A second gang arrived later and completed the theft.
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That is why the two crimes looked identical and yet were not, in the police reading, the work of the same hands at the vault. The investigation has since widened beyond the men already named in Somangalam and the West Bengal trio held in the Kudapakkam hearse case.
Local network
DIG Sai said police have also arrested a man named Mustafa, who had been hiding in Chennai. His detention, officers believe, helps map how the visiting gangs found local cover, vehicles and a place to lie low after the border run.