Army Weapons Including AK Rifles and Pistols Stolen from Madras Regiment Premises in Hyderabad
HYDERABAD: A cache of service weapons was reportedly stolen from a locked storage room on the Madras Regiment premises in the Hyderabad–Secunderabad Cantonment, triggering both a police case at Bollarum and an internal Army inquiry into how firearms vanished from a tightly controlled military area.
The theft was discovered on Sunday night, 31 August, when officials checked the room and found the lock broken and several weapons missing. A formal complaint was filed at Bollarum Police Station on Monday morning, and police have since treated the matter as sensitive because it involves a defence establishment within the Malkajgiri Police Commissionerate.
While the Army and police have not released a public, itemised list, local reports citing official sources say the missing stock is believed to include 12 weapons, along with ammunition kept with them. The most consistent account describes four AK-pattern assault rifles, six pistols, one Indian Small Arms System (INSAS) rifle and ammunition. Some reports referred to the rifles as AK-47s, while a few social-media posts described them as AK-203s. NewsMeter reported the missing items as four AK-47s, six pistols and two other guns. One widely shared post also claimed about 2,000 rounds of ammunition, but that figure has not been independently confirmed by official statements.
Police have kept operational details under wraps, and neither the Army nor Bollarum police has publicly confirmed the exact inventory so far.
The Madras Regiment, whose centre is at Wellington in the Nilgiris, is the Indian Army’s oldest infantry regiment. Its battalions and attached elements are deployed 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 reportedly have four gates, with entry restricted to Army personnel and other authorised persons. The weapons were stored in a designated section rather than in an open armoury accessible to visitors.
That setting has heightened concern among investigators. Secunderabad Cantonment is one of the oldest British-era military stations in the Deccan and later merged with the Bolarum garrison. Bollarum — also spelled Bolarum or Bollaram — remains a tightly controlled military neighbourhood, which is why investigators say it would be unusual for an outsider to walk in, break a lock and leave with a dozen firearms without either knowing the layout or receiving help from inside.
Two lines of inquiry are now running in parallel. On the police side, senior officers of the Malkajgiri Commissionerate are supervising the case registered at Bollarum. Teams have visited the regiment premises, inspected the storage room and started reviewing CCTV footage from inside the complex as well as nearby civilian cameras. On the Army side, senior officers inspected the scene after the loss was discovered, and personnel who had access to the section are being questioned. The service has not issued a public statement on the outcome of its inquiry.
Investigators believe more than one person may have been involved. The combined weight and bulk of four rifles, six pistols, an INSAS rifle and ammunition would make it difficult for one person to remove the weapons alone. Officers are also examining whether the suspects already knew the location of the room and how to reach it after hours.
Army sources have suggested that an insider role cannot be ruled out, given that access to the weapons section is limited to authorised personnel. Police have not named any suspect and have not confirmed whether the lock was forced from outside or opened using knowledge of the room’s routine.
The case is being viewed as a security matter because missing service weapons can quickly become a threat outside the cantonment. Rifles and pistols taken from a military campus may be used in crime or moved into illegal markets. Telangana police have in other cases circulated serial numbers of factory-made weapons seized from Maoist surrenders in order to trace their origins, and investigators are expected to treat any serial numbers on the missing Army weapons as a priority if a detailed list is shared with police.
Similar thefts from military or paramilitary holdings elsewhere in India have often later been linked to insiders, poor accounting or impersonation of duty personnel. The source article cites, as examples only and not as related cases, 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 incidents are not connected to the present case; they are cited to show why command-level inventory checks typically follow such reports.
The location adds another layer of complexity. Bollarum and the wider Secunderabad Cantonment sit alongside civilian traffic, markets and residential colonies. That means police must establish not only who entered the room, but also how the weapons left the four-gate campus and whether they were moved deeper into Hyderabad, taken onto a highway or perhaps transported by train. Officers examining CCTV are focusing on the period between the Sunday night discovery and the last confirmed check of the store.
As of the morning of 1 September 2026, no arrests had been announced. The Army says a complaint has been filed and an internal inquiry is underway, while Bollarum and Malkajgiri police say the case has been registered and CCTV evidence is being examined. The details remain restricted because the incident took place inside a defence establishment.
Any further update is likely to depend on whether the weapons are recovered, whether the Army shares serial numbers with police databases and whether the inquiry remains 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.)
