They brought paint to blind the cameras before they ever touched the machine.
The chase ended in gunfire on the streets of Kavi Nagar, a neighborhood in Ghaziabad, when a police team closed in on a man named Kamruddin — the alleged ringleader of an ATM robbery gang that had been cutting its way through cash machines across northern and western India.
Kamruddin was not alone. Two accomplices, identified as Kallu alias Usmaan and Shahrun, were with him when the police moved in. Rather than surrender, the three men opened fire on the officers. Police returned fire, wounding Kamruddin and one of his associates. Both were taken to a hospital for treatment. All three were ultimately arrested.
The gang's method was straightforward and destructive. They carried gas cylinders and cutting equipment — the kind used in welding — and used them to physically breach ATM machines. To blind surveillance systems, they brought black paint to coat CCTV camera lenses before going to work. When police searched the men after the confrontation, they recovered the gas cylinder, the cutter, country-made revolvers, clothing the gang wore during jobs, the paint, and 40,000 rupees in cash.
Senior Superintendent of Police Kalanidhi described the gang's reach as wide. They had been operating not just in Delhi and the surrounding National Capital Region but across Rajasthan, Gujarat, and states in the south as well — a footprint that suggests a mobile, practiced operation rather than opportunistic local crime.
The arrested men have already confessed to at least one specific job: an ATM robbery in Indirapuram, a locality within Ghaziabad itself, carried out just the previous month. That admission gives investigators a concrete thread to pull.
Police say the investigation is continuing, and the scope of what the gang may have done across multiple states is still being mapped.
Notable Quotes
The gang was operating in Delhi-NCR and nearby states. They opened fire on the police team, and in retaliatory firing, two of them including the kingpin were injured.— Senior Superintendent of Police Kalanidhi, Ghaziabad
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Gas cutters and black paint — that's a pretty specific toolkit. What does it tell you about how this gang operated?
It tells you they weren't improvising. Gas welding equipment takes planning to acquire and transport. The paint for the cameras is a deliberate countermeasure. These weren't people smashing a machine with a crowbar on impulse.
And yet they only had 40,000 rupees on them when arrested. That seems low for a gang operating across multiple states.
It does. That could mean the cash from recent jobs had already been moved, or that ATM hauls are smaller than people imagine once you account for what's actually accessible with that method.
The gang apparently operated in Rajasthan, Gujarat, and southern states too. How does a crew like this sustain that kind of mobility?
Someone is funding the logistics — fuel, equipment, probably safe houses. A kingpin like Kamruddin likely had a network beyond just the two men arrested with him.
The Indirapuram robbery confession — why does that detail matter?
Because it anchors the investigation locally. It gives Ghaziabad police jurisdiction and a specific crime to build a case around, even if the broader interstate picture takes longer to untangle.
Two of the three were shot and hospitalized. Does that complicate the legal process?
It adds a layer, but in India, encounter-related injuries during an arrest are documented and reviewed. The investigation continuing is partly about the criminal case and partly about accounting for what happened in that exchange of fire.
What's the thing this story points toward that isn't fully visible yet?
The network. Three men don't sustain operations across five or six states alone. There are likely fences, suppliers, and others who knew what this gang was doing. That's what investigators will be pulling at now.