The carefully crafted plan would have been a success, but for a loose rear door of a vehicle.
An ATM in BTS Layout, Arakere, was lifted from its kiosk and loaded on to an SUV early on Saturday. But, while the five-member gang responsible was making its getaway, the vehicle’s rear door opened, and the machine fell off.
Till then, everything had gone according to plan for the five-member gang. The ATM was an easy target as the machine was not fixed to the ground; only two wires held it in place. The Hulimavu police said the kiosk had neither a CCTV nor a security guard. An electric wire had been snapped off near the ATM kiosk, shutting out the streetlights, they added.
However, trouble started when one of the thieves made a noise alerting employees of the Bangalore Electricity Supply Company centre at Beerappa complex nearby at around 2.30 am. The staff looked out of the window and saw a masked gang loading an ATM machine into a vehicle outside the ICICI Bank kiosk.
“We ran down to the ATM, but the vehicle was just leaving. Two of us chased the vehicle,” one of the employees, Devaraj, later told the police.
As the speeding SUV took a steep turn on the road, the vehicle’s rear door opened and the machine fell off. Devaraj and his colleague pursued their chase hoping to jot down the licence number, but the vehicle did not have one.
