Addicted to online gambling, Bengaluru staffer at Indian Bank steals gold worth Rs 4 crore from customer lockers

BENGALURU: An assistant manager at a public-sector bank in the city has landed in police net on charges of stealing around 2.7kg of gold ornaments, pledged against loans and kept in the bank lockers of 15 customers, to spend on online gambling. The value of the stolen gold articles is over Rs 4 crore, says the bank in its police complaint.

The accused is Kiran Kumar E, attached to Indian Bank, Girinagar branch. Based on a complaint filed by the chief manager of the bank, Dileep Kumar, police have booked Kumar under BNS section 316 (criminal breach of trust). The theft came to light on Feb 2, when a woman customer, who closed her gold loan and was getting the pledged ornaments released, found several ornaments missing.

Complainant Kumar stated, "Immediately, we carried out a stock verification on the 207 packets containing gold ornaments pledged with us against loans for the last one year. Of them, 24 packets were tampered with. On examination, we discovered that gold from three packets had completely vanished. Gold ornaments from the remaining 21 packets were partially missing."


An internal inquiry was conducted in which Kumar confessed to stealing them between June 2025 and Jan 2026. "Kumar pledged the stolen ornaments with different private finance firms for money. We succeeded in recovering around 1.2kg from them. However, some firms are not cooperating with us, and we are approaching court for intervention," an investigating officer said.

"The pledged gold ornaments are kept in separate lockers, and only the manager and assistant manager have the keys to them. Misusing his official power, Kiran gained access to these lockers and stole part by part," he added.

Police have requested customers availing locker facilities (for personal use or for pledging against loans) to do a periodic check on their stock. "Kiran stole mostly from those lockers which were unattended for long," they said.