DAVANAGERE: Four persons, accused of carrying out a bank dacoity at the SBI branch of Nyamathi in October 2024, were arrested by the district police on late Saturday night near Arabhagatte village of Nyamathi taluk.
The arrested are Guddu Kalia (45) a fruit trader, Hazrat Ali (50) resident of Ward No 9, and Aslam (55) and Kamaruddin Babu Sereli (40), both residents of Uttar Pradesh. Two more accused, Rajaram and Babusha, both residents of Uttar Pradesh, are absconding.
Two teams, comprising Inspector of Police of Nyamati, Ravi N S and PSI of Honnali Police Station Sanjeev Kumar, PSI Sagar Attarwala and staff of DCRB unit, were formed to probe the case.
The said teams were monitoring the movements of cars at check-posts within the limits of Honnali and Nyamati Police Stations and checking the vehicles at 1.30 am at the check-post near H Kadadakatte Naka Bandi area. Two cars coming from Honnali at a high speed were told to stop, but they further sped up and moved towards Nyamathi, bypassing a police jeep parked to block the movement of the cars.
Ravi and his staff chased the cars in the jeep and at around 1.40 am, near the Arabaghatte village cross, the cars entered the road towards Soratur village. The jeep overtook and managed to intercept the two cars. When the accused got out of the car and tried to escape into the fields on both sides of the road, they were stopped by the police. Three accused were caught, while the rest managed to flee.
When the police were chasing the culprits, one of them attacked Ananda, a cop, with a machete. Inspector Ravi opened fire in the air and told him to surrender. However, the accused attacked Ananda again with the machete in his hand, causing injuries to Ananda. The accused then tried to attack Ananda again with the machete. In self-defence, the inspector shot at the accused in the left leg with his service revolver. He was immediately taken into custody.
When the accused were brought to the police station and interrogated, it came to light that they had previously robbed banks in different states and different districts of Karnataka. They came to Karnataka a week ago to rob banks and had stayed in and around Davanagere looking for banks to rob. They had been roaming around the SBI Bank in Savalanga village for the last two days and after collecting information, they decided to rob the the branch that night and came in two cars to the Harihar-Shivamogga Road.
The two cars used by the accused to commit the crime, four live bullets, one oxygen cylinder regulator, three iron rods, five pocket gunpowder, five monkey caps, five pairs of hand gloves, and a machete have been seized.
The accused are also wanted for stealing gold ornaments, robbery in Hosahalli police station limits in Bengaluru Rural district, where they stole gold ornaments worth Rs 3 crore.
The team also attempted to rob the SBI bank in Palamu district of Jharkhand in February 2025. It was learnt during the interrogation that the above accused were involved in theft cases not only in Karnataka but also in Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi.
SP Uma Prashanth congratulated the team of Nyamathi and Honnali police stations for their exemplary act.