Police on Monday said they had arrested six people for alleged dacoity at the house of a chartered accountant (CA) in south Delhi’s Saidulajab Extension.
The arrested men had entered her two-storey house impersonating courier delivery boys and held the family hostage at gunpoint on the afternoon of December 9. They made away with ₹4 lakh in cash, four gold chains, one diamond bracelet and other jewellery items and valuables worth ₹5 lakh, they said.
The arrested persons include the family’s former driver, an ex-Indian Army jawan, who quit the force after being booked for molestation, and a man from Nepal, the police said.
Deputy commissioner of police (south) Atul Kumar Thakur said that Shiv Shankar, the family’s former driver, had left the job a few months ago and planned to rob his employer’s house. However, the plan got delayed because of the lockdown, said Thakur.
The DCP said that Shankar allegedly had tipped off his associates about the family’s financial condition and availability of cash and jewellery in the house. Shankar, Anil Kumar and Sandeep Kumar alias Fauji, were the key conspirators of the dacoity. The police identified the other three arrested men as Arman Khan, Mohammad Danish and Vijay Rana, a Nepali citizen, the DCP said.
“The six men had been planning the dacoity for nearly one-and-a-half months and carried out multiple reconnaissances of the house and escape routes. They used code numbers 1 to 6 to communicate with each other during the crime and wore masks and hand gloves to avoid being identified and leaving fingerprints at the crime scene,” said DCP Thakur.
On December 9 around 4.30pm, police said, Shankar brought the six men to the house. Two of them, impersonating courier delivery boys, rang the doorbell. As the domestic help opened the main gate, the duo pushed her inside and cornered all family members at gunpoint. The other four suspects, wearing masks and helmets, entered the house and threatened to kill the family members if anybody raised any alarm, said a police officer associated with the case.
“The robbers thought they would get nearly ₹1 crore in cash from the house. However, they could only find ₹4 lakh in cash. So, they ransacked the entire house, collected whatever jewellery and valuables they could find, and fled,” the officer said, adding that the suspects also took away the digital video recorder (DVR) of the CCTV cameras installed in the house.
The family informed the police about the crime and the complainant (the CA) told them that the suspects fled on a red motorcycle and a scooter. The woman’s husband owns a furniture showroom in east Delhi. He was at the showroom at the time of the dacoity, the police said.
The police registered a case and scanned footage from CCTV cameras in the neighbourhood. The police found the number plates on the vehicles were fake. Through the CCTV camera footage, the police tracked the routes the suspects took and found that they had come from Zakir Nagar.
“The suspects swapped the two vehicles and changed routes to evade police. However, we activated our criminal intelligence network in Zakir Nagar and discovered the involvement of Arman Khan, who is also involved in other robberies and cases registered under the Arms Act. The police caught Khan from Nizamuddin area on December 11. His interrogation led to the arrest of the other five from Delhi and Haryana’s Rohtak,” added Thakur.
Police have recovered ₹45,000 in cash and some stolen jewellery which the suspects had sold in Rohtak immediately after the dacoity. One suspect, Chhotu, is still on the run with the remaining money, police said.
