UTHALL, Pakistan (Digital Itla) — A gang of university students who posed as security personnel to pull off a 202 million Pakistani rupee ($725,000) bank heist in southwestern Pakistan were undone by digital financial tracking after depositing the loot into their personal bank accounts, police said.
The robbery took place in February last year at a National Bank of Pakistan branch in Uthal, a town in Balochistan's Lasbela district. Six armed men wearing official security uniforms—ordered online months earlier—entered the building under the pretext of conducting an administrative inspection, according to court documents and police reports.
Once inside, the gunmen assaulted security guards, confiscated a G3 assault rifle, and locked the branch staff inside the cash vault before escaping with six sacks of cash. During the getaway, the suspects exchanged gunfire with responding police units, leaving the local Station House Officer, Yar Muhammad, critically injured with a bullet wound that resulted in the permanent loss of an eye.
To erase forensic evidence, the suspects drove the getaway car into a remote mountainous region and set it on fire alongside two firearms used in the operation, police said.
"The suspects executed a highly sophisticated plan believing they would never be caught," Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Lasbela Najeebullah Pandrani told reporters in Uthal. "However, a combination of human intelligence and modern digital forensics eventually led us to them."
Investigators caught a major breakthrough after analyzing bank accounts belonging to the suspected ringleader—a 25-year-old student at the Lasbela University of Marine Sciences and a former employee of the banking sector who leveraged his knowledge of cash vault protocols. Police discovered that the ringleader's bank account, which previously logged modest transactions, registered over 170 million rupees ($610,000) in deposits following the robbery.
A local trader also confessed before a magistrate to receiving nearly 27.5 million rupees of the stolen funds through electronic transfer.
Police have arrested three primary suspects, all aged between 25 and 26, and recovered vehicles and assets valued at over 40 million rupees. A local magistrate remanded the three suspects into judicial custody on Thursday while law enforcement agencies continue raids to apprehend three remaining accomplices.
