But the free run of the gang was cut short after Madhya Pradesh police nabbed the goons in Indore and alerted their Nagpur counterparts on Wednesday.
Police suspect the ATM at Ingoley Nagar was gutted after intense heat from gas cutters caused a circuit malfunction that triggered a blaze.
Street CCTV footage showed ATM thieves zipping away in a white car at around 1.47 am after the 15-minute heist.
SBI authorities, however, are yet to hand over the inside footage to city police.
“There can be clarity on the modus operandi once we scour CCTV footage of the ATM interiors. The camera outside the machine was turned away by the goons to skirt detection and another set of CCTVs at a nearby shop was defunct,” said an Hudkeshwar police official.
Another ATM in the vicinity was left untouched by the gang, which entered the city via Outer Ring Road (ORR) and scouted for an unguarded outlet.
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SBI’s Ingole Nagar Layout ATM, which is 4 km off the ORR, was a sitting duck as police patrols were withdrawn from the area and redeployed for Dussehra, Koradi Devi and Deekshabhoomi events.
Smoke billowing from the ATM alerted passers-by, who sent an SOS to police in the early hours of October 23.
Police too assumed that the ATM had caught fire accidentally.
SBI officials, who rushed to the site, were also clueless about the heist till their technical team told them about the empty vault.
Rattled by frequent ATM break-ins, police commissioner Amitesh Kumar is now writing to concerned authorities on the need to bolster security.
“Unguarded ATMs are being repeatedly targeted. We can only deploy a patrol squad, round-the-clock vigil is not possible,” he said.
Senior inspector of Hudkeshwar police station Prashant Mane said, cops are being deployed in the desolate places for surveillance, but substantial manpower was withdrawn due to festival bandobast.
Sources said, the gang busted by Indore police, also travelled in a white car.
Nagpur police have reached Indore to take custody of the accused.