Bank staffer in Bengaluru steals 2.7 kg gold from locker to finance gambling

An assistant manager at a public sector bank in Bengaluru was arrested by police on charges of stealing almost 2.7 kg of gold ornaments from customer lockers and mortgaging them for fund online gambling and betting. The accused, identified as 34-year old Kiran Kumar, reportedly used his position in the bank to access lockers of customers during times when the branch manager was absent. He reportedly started siphoning off small amounts of gold over time.

The case came to light on January two when customers visited the Indian bank to retrieve their pledged jewellery and reported discrepancies during locker verifications and missing items to the bank, leading to the discovery of theft.

A detailed inspection launched by the bank found that ornaments were partially missing from 21 packets and completely missing from three. A preliminary investigation revealed that around 2,793 grams of gold, worth nearly 4 crores, have been stolen.

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After detecting the theft, Branch Manager Dileep Kumar lodged a police complaint under BNS sections 316 (criminal breach of trust). In his complint Kumar stated When the customer notified the Bank of missing ornaments, "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 the 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. The inquiry revealed Kumar pledged these ornaments to private financial firms for money.