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New Delhi: A routine Monday morning at Canara Bank’s Chikhla branch in Sitasawangi, Bhandara, turned into a major crime scene when staff discovered the strongroom ransacked and Rs 1.58 crore missing. What initially appeared to be a daring burglary soon unravelled into a meticulously planned insider heist carried out by the bank’s own assistant manager, 32-year-old Mayur Nepale. Police solved the case within 24 hours, tracing the trail straight back to the man entrusted with safeguarding the bank’s cash.
According to a TOI report, Nepale, a Nagpur resident known among colleagues as a UPSC aspirant, was drowning in massive debts due to online betting. Investigators believe this financial pressure pushed him into orchestrating the overnight robbery, using his knowledge of the branch’s layout, security systems, and keys to execute the crime single-handedly.
Police reconstruction shows he attempted to stage the scene as a forced break-in. Nepale snapped power lines to disable internal cameras, used duplicate keys to enter the strongroom, covered his face with a monkey cap, wiped his fingerprints and even tried to mask his body odour. He broke the channel gate and shutter lock to make the crime appear like an external burglary. But one mistake exposed him: an external CCTV camera that captured him arriving on a scooter carrying empty bags and leaving with the bags stuffed. His physical features and the scooter’s details were clearly visible.
Investigators say his plan was inspired partly by a high-profile Rs 58 crore gold heist in Karnataka earlier this year. He had also been watching online tutorials on committing similar crimes. To maximise the loot, he had requisitioned Rs 85 lakh from the RBI on November 13, citing “emergency requirements,” pushing the branch’s cash stock to nearly five times normal levels.
On November 17, he bought four bags in Nagpur. In the early hours of November 18, he broke into the branch, removed the DVR and cameras, and emptied the cash chests. Later that morning, he reappeared on the same scooter, pretending to join the investigation, but police quickly flagged him as a suspect. “No outsider could know the exact camera positions and key locations,” SP Noorul Hasan said.
A raid at his wife’s residence in Nagpur led to his confession. Police recovered Rs 96.12 lakh in cash, a Tata Nexon, the scooter, a Redmi phone, and the stolen DVR, assets worth Rs 1.07 crore.
Nepale was reportedly under more than Rs 80 lakh debt, including Rs 30 lakh lost to online gambling and multiple loans. He has been booked for theft, criminal breach of trust, and destruction of evidence. Police will now inform the RBI of procedural lapses and recommend cloud-based CCTV backups to prevent similar insider-driven heists.
