Around Rs 72.50 lakh in cash was stolen by “out-of-state actors” from four ATMs in three towns of Tiruvannamalai district on Sunday night. While two of the ATMs were in Tiruvannamalai, the other two ATMs were in Kalasapakkam and Polur towns, sources revealed.

North zone IG Kannan has issued an order on Monday to transfer 6 persons, including special assistant inspector, head constable, who were not engaged in night duty, to district armed duty.

Following the heists at 4 ATMs in Tiruvannamalai, DGP C Sylendra Babu had held a meeting with 51 senior executives of various banks on Monday and advised them to use high-definition CCTV systems at ATM kiosks besides telling them to save the feeds in cloud storage rather than in hard disks.

The state head of the police force also told the bankers to make the surveillance in a discreet manner with the use of cameras that can capture the face of people clearly entering the kiosk.

Sylendra Babu also asked the bank officials to link the burglar alarms fixed in the ATMs to the nearest police station so that police also get alerted when the alarm goes off. “If the surveillance camera feed are stored in cloud storage intruders will not able to take it away,” DGP noted.

Bank officials had promised to implement the instruction from the police chief in letter and spirit.