Gone in a Long Weekend: 59kg Gold Heist Stuns Karnataka

The village of Managuli in Karnataka’s Vijayapura district dozed through a long weekend in May. No alarms rang, no sirens wailed. But when the Canara Bank reopened on the morning of May 25, the lock on the rolling shutter had been sliced. The bank strongroom’s grill had been wrenched, a steel almirah flung open, and 1,373 packets of pledged gold jewellery—amounting to nearly 59 kilograms—had vanished. Around 372 grams of it lay scattered. Another cabinet, used to store cash, had been cracked open and ₹5.2 lakh was gone.

There was no footage. The thieves had taken the NVR unit that housed the CCTV recordings. Superintendent of Police Laxman Nimbargi told the media that eight investigating teams had been formed. The heist, one of the biggest in recent history, took place between 7pm on May 23 and 11:30am on May 25—a window so wide and a plan so quiet, it felt like cinema.

But this was no isolated act. It is part of a pattern, a sequence of increasingly sophisticated robberies across Karnataka, each one escalating in confidence and audacity.

On October 28, 2024, in the Nyamati branch of the State Bank of India, Davanagere district, staff returning after a long weekend opened their strongroom to find the locker cut with a gas torch. The iron grill on a side window had been neatly removed. The CCTV system was down. The NVR, again, was missing. To frustrate forensic efforts, the burglars had scattered red chilli powder across the floor—a crude but effective method for masking scent trails from sniffer dogs.

The man behind the plan was Vijay Kumar from Madurai. His bank loan had been rejected. In the months that followed, he turned to instruction manuals not of finance but of felonies—episodes of Money Heist, YouTube videos on cutting through safe locks, and documentaries on bank robberies. Kumar plotted for six to nine months, acquiring tools, casing the bank, recruiting accomplices. The 17.7 kg of stolen gold was later recovered from a well in Usilampatti. Six men were arrested.

Fast forward to January 17, 2025. In a coastal stretch of Mangaluru, six masked men entered a branch of the Vyavasaya Seva Sahakari Sangha Bank armed with pistols and machetes. They forced the staff to the ground, made the manager open the strongroom, and in under half an hour, left with 18.5 kilograms of gold and ₹11.67 lakh in cash. The bank’s CCTV system was, inexplicably, under maintenance. The men fled in a grey Fiat with fake number plates. But this time, police moved fast. Within days, three of the main suspects—Murugandi Thevar, Yosuva Rajendran, and Kannan Mani—were arrested in Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu. The gold was recovered almost in full, along with a portion of the cash, the getaway vehicle, and weapons.

Later, two local facilitators were arrested: Bhaskar Belchapada, 69, with priors in Mumbai and Mangaluru, and Mohammed Nazir. The most cinematic moment came when, during a site inspection, Murugandi Thevar made a break for it, attacking a constable with a sudden burst of desperation. He was shot in the leg. Both men survived.

What binds these heists is gold, perfect timing and cold calculation. Long weekends. Off-hours. Closed shutters and static cameras. Each robbery seems to have studied the last, improving on its failures. Where the Davanagere incident banked on stealth, in Kotekar, Mangaluru, it was fear. And Managul has left behind almost nothing. Except a black doll that was reportedly found at the crime scene—positioned, police say, to mislead. Perhaps it means something. You don’t leave a ritualistic doll behind unless you know you have the time. Unless you are confident. Unless, in some way, you are enjoying the story you are writing as you go.

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