Are bank robberies increasing in India? What we know

A group of thieves broke into a branch of the State Bank of India (SBI) in Nyamathi town in Davanagere district of Karnataka and stole gold jewelery worth around ₹13 crore. The incident came to light when bank employees reached the premises on Monday morning. The jewelry was kept in safe deposit boxes and may have been stolen during the night of Oct. 25 to Oct. 26, when the bank remained closed, police said.

An official said the thieves entered the building through a window and used gas cutters to break into three locker doors, but were only able to open one. They removed the CCTV cameras and the digital video recorder.

This incident has brought renewed attention to concerns about the security of banks across the country.

Bankdacoity

While discussions are swirling about the increasing cases of cyber fraud, bank theft incidents have also increased in several states in 2024.

In August, unidentified miscreants armed with firearms stormed into a branch of the Punjab National Bank (PNB) in Patna district and ran away with ₹21 lakh. The incident happened around 10:30 am. Before this, criminals looted ₹30 lakh from a bank in Barbigha area of ​​Sheikhpura district in July.

In June, a group of robbers looted ₹17.50 lakh from an Axis Bank branch in Devkuli, Bihta. Before this, five armed criminals raided a branch of HDFC Bank in Begusari in Bihar and took away ₹20 lakh in March this year.

In May this year, CCTV footage of a robbery at an SBI branch in Manipur’s Churachandpur district went viral on social media, showing five armed men committing the theft. According to the FIR filed in the case, they took away around ₹20 lakh.

The same month, police in Madhya Pradesh arrested three criminals, including a bank employee, after robbing ₹41 lakh from a bank in Damoh district. This incident was reported from Madhyanchal Gramin Bank in Fatehpur, which falls under the jurisdiction of Magaron police station.

Dacoities and burglaries

Crime data collected by Delhi Police earlier showed a major spike in dacoities burglaries in 2024.

In the national capital, dacoities increased by 23% this year compared to 2023 and witnessed a 46% increase compared to 2022. Similarly, burglaries have increased by 25.2% compared to last year.

The overall data showed that the police in the city registered over 1.7 lakh cases under the Indian Penal Code and Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita this year.

‘Lack of safety’

Over the years, the lack of security measures has been seen as one of the main reasons behind the robberies of various banks and ATMs.

In December last year, a random survey by Hindustan Times at several ATMs in Chandigarh and nearby areas to check whether basic security measures were being followed found that most of these ATMs remained unattended, while at some places guards without weapons were present.

Following a theft from an ATM in Bellandur in Bengaluru, the city police had convened a meeting with various banking authorities in July this year, urging them to increase security measures.

In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, the government in July 2017 said that around ₹180 crore had been lost in 2,632 cases of theft, dacoity and burglaries across 51 banks in the country between 2014-15 and 2016-17.

In August 2018, official data showed how banks lost ₹235.96 crore in the last five years due to incidents such as burglary, theft, dacoity and theft.