Bollarum Police Station
Hyderabad: A retired Indian Army havildar has been arrested for stealing a cache of assault rifles, pistols and over 1,900 rounds of ammunition from the armoury of the 20 Battalion, Madras Regiment, at Bollarum in Secunderabad Cantonment, nearly a fortnight after the theft came to light, police said on Friday, September 11.
The accused, Upputholla Mallesh, 37, a resident of Jangam Reddy Pally in Amrabad of Nagarkurnool district, served in the Indian Army for 16 years after joining in 2010 and retired on June 30 this year, according to a statement from the Director General of Police’s (DGP) office.
The theft appears preliminarily to have been driven by resentment over his early retirement from service, the police said.
Mallesh allegedly entered the battalion premises around 11 pm on the intervening night of August 30 and 31 and took the arms from the Kote room and Magazine room.
The stolen cache comprised four AK-203 7.62×39 mm rifles with five magazines, one 5.56 mm INSAS 1B1 rifle with three magazines, six 9 mm Auto 1A pistols with 12 magazines, a civilian 6.35 bore pistol with magazine and a passive night-vision binocular. Also taken were 1,156 rounds of 9 mm pistol ammunition, 720 rounds of AK-203 ammunition and 36 rounds of INSAS ammunition comprising 11 ball, five tracer and 20 blank rounds.
The weapons were recovered from his residence and from locations at Kowkoor and Yapral in Hyderabad‘s outskirts, and at Achampet in Nagarkurnool district, the police said.
He was arrested on Friday and remanded in judicial custody in a case registered at Bollarum Police Station under sections 331(4) (house-trespass) and 305 (aggravated forms of theft committed in special place) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).
The arrest followed a joint operation by Bollarum Police, the Hyderabad Commissioner’s Task Force and the Special Operations Team of the Malkajgiri Commissionerate, led by Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) (Trimulgherry Division) G Ramesh, acting on credible information. The investigation had been placed under an officer of ACP rank on the instructions of senior officials.
The DGP’s office described the case as a major challenge and credited the outcome to coordinated work between the Malkajgiri Police Zone, the Hyderabad City Police Task Force and the Telangana State Intelligence Department.
The theft was detected on August 31 when personnel found the locks of the Kote and battalion magazine broken and weapons missing. The arms had last been physically accounted for on the evening of August 30.
The disappearance of automatic weapons from a restricted military facility prompted a wide-ranging investigation, drawing in Military Intelligence, the Defence Intelligence Agency, the Directorate of Military Intelligence, the Military Police and the National Investigation Agency (NIA), amid concerns over a possible terror or extremist angle.
The NIA did not register a case but assisted the Telangana Police and military authorities, with defence establishments across Telangana and neighbouring states placed on heightened alert.
Investigators had suspected an insider role from early on. Around 800 personnel are attached to the battalion and the weapons and ammunition storage rooms are roughly 50 metres apart. A significant aspect examined during the probe was that the closed circuit television (CCTV) camera network at the facility was reportedly being switched off daily without valid reason.
The Task Force had formed 12 teams to trace the weapons. Of 10 people detained initially, four were being treated as suspects and questioned.Earlier on Friday, the Indian Army rejected reports that three serving officers had been arrested or detained in the case.
“It is clarified that reports stating that three Indian Army officers have been arrested or detained in connection with the case are factually incorrect, misleading and unverified,” it said in a statement, adding that a joint investigation was under way.
This post was last modified on September 11, 2026 5:22 pm