HYDERABAD: Army authorities have reported the theft of a cache of service weapons from a locked storage room on the Madras Regiment premises in the Hyderabad–Secunderabad Cantonment, prompting a police case at Bollarum and a parallel internal Army inquiry.
The theft came to light on Sunday night, 31 August, when officials inspected the room and found its lock broken and firearms missing. A complaint was lodged on Monday morning at Bollarum Police Station, which falls under the Malkajgiri Police Commissionerate. Police registered a case and have treated the matter as sensitive because it involves a defence establishment.
What is reported missing
Local outlets, citing police and Army sources, have described the missing inventory as 12 weapons. The breakdown most consistently reported is:
- four AK-pattern assault rifles (described in most reports as AK-47s; some social-media posts identified them as AK-203s)
- six pistols
- one Indian Small Arms System (INSAS) rifle
- ammunition stored with the arms
NewsMeter described the haul as four AK-47s, six pistols and two other guns. One widely circulated post also claimed about 2,000 rounds of ammunition. Neither the Army nor Bollarum police have issued a public, itemised inventory, and the ammunition figure has not been independently confirmed by official statements.
Police have kept operational details confidential.
Where it happened
The Madras Regiment is the Indian Army’s oldest infantry regiment, with its centre at Wellington in the Nilgiris. Individual battalions and attached elements are stationed across the country. In this case, sources said the unit occupies part of the Cantonment area used by several formations linked to a defence training establishment. The premises have four gates. Entry is restricted to Army personnel and other authorised persons. The weapons were kept in a designated storage section, not an open armoury accessible to visitors.
Secunderabad Cantonment itself is one of the oldest British-era military stations in the Deccan, later merged with the Bolarum garrison. Bollarum (also spelled Bolarum or Bollaram) remains a tightly controlled military neighbourhood. That geography is why investigators say an outsider walking in, breaking a lock and leaving with a dozen firearms would be unusual without knowledge of the layout or help from inside.
How police and the Army are investigating
Two tracks are running together:
- Criminal case: Bollarum police registered the complaint on Monday. Senior officers of the Malkajgiri Commissionerate are supervising. Teams have visited the regiment, inspected the storage room and begun reviewing CCTV footage from the premises and nearby civilian cameras.
- Army inquiry: Senior Army officers inspected the scene after the loss was discovered. Personnel who had access to the section are being questioned. The service has not issued a public statement on findings.
Investigators suspect more than one person was involved. The weight and bulk of four rifles, six pistols, an INSAS rifle and ammunition make a single-handed removal difficult. They are also examining whether the suspects already knew where the room was and how to reach it after hours.
Army sources have pointed to a possible insider role for the same reason: access to the weapons section is limited to authorised personnel. Police have not named any accused and have not confirmed whether the lock was forced from outside or opened with knowledge of the room’s routine.
Why the case is being treated as a security matter
Service rifles and pistols leaving a military campus create two immediate risks: use in crime, and the possibility that the arms could be offered on illegal markets. Telangana police have, in other recent cases, circulated serial numbers of factory-made weapons seized from Maoist surrenders to trace origins. That practice underlines why investigators will treat the missing Army serial numbers as a priority if and when a detailed list is shared with police.
Similar thefts from military or paramilitary holdings elsewhere in India have often later been traced to insiders, lax accounting, or impersonation of duty personnel. Past examples include an INSAS and magazines taken from an Agniveer post in Mumbai’s Navy Nagar in September 2025, and older Army court-of-inquiry findings that blamed unit-level lapses when rifles disappeared from an armoured regiment in Rajasthan. Those cases are not linked to the present incident; they only illustrate why command-level inventory checks usually follow such reports.
Cantonment and civilian interface
Bollarum and the wider Secunderabad Cantonment sit next to civilian traffic, markets and residential colonies. That mix is routine in Hyderabad. It also means police must reconstruct not only who opened the room but how the weapons left the four-gate campus and whether they moved into the city, onto a highway, or onto a train. Officers examining CCTV are focusing on that window between Sunday night discovery and the last verified check of the store.
Official position so far
- Army: complaint filed; internal inquiry underway; no detailed public inventory.
- Bollarum / Malkajgiri police: case registered; CCTV being examined; details withheld because the premises are a defence establishment.
- No arrests announced as of the morning of 1 September 2026.
Further updates will depend on whether the weapons are recovered, whether the Army shares serial numbers with police databases, and whether the inquiry stays local or is escalated.
(Based on the Army complaint at Bollarum Police Station, reporting by Hyderabad Mail, NewsMeter and Hyderabad News Hunt, and contemporaneous accounts from Malkajgiri police sources. The Army had not issued a formal press note at the time of writing.)
