With an aim to earn easy money and fancy for guns, three school drop outs started the business of robbing cars in the tricity (Chandigarh, Panchkula, and Mohali).With the trio’s arrest, the Mohali police claimed to have solved the Toyota Fortuner carjacking case, here on Thursday.
The arrested men have been identified as Ajay Pal Singh, 21, of Moosewala village, near Moga, Harsimran Singh,24, and Arshdeep Singh, 23, of Firozpur. The police have also recovered two. 32 bore and one .315 bore pistols from the accused.
Five days after unidentified men took away the Toyota Fortuner of a Sector-43 resident from Westwood Resort, Kathgarh village, Dhakoli, after threatening the driver at gunpoint, the district Crime Investigation Agency (CIA) recovered the SUV from Phase 7 on Wednesday evening. As per information, a member of the investigating team, Gurtej Singh, had seen the silver coloured SUV parked outside a house.
The three accused had been putting up in the locality as paying guests. After committing the crime in Dhakoli, the trio had brought the SUV to Phase 7 and changed the registration number CH 01 AA 0044 to CH O3K 7814, affixed on the rear, revealed to be that of a Hyndai Santro.
Senior superintendent of police(SSP) Mohali Kuldeep Singh Chahal said, “Apart from Dhakoli, the three have confessed to robbing four cars and SUVs from the tricity. Three cars are from Panchkula and one from Mullanpur.”
SSP Chahal said, “They would choose a soft target, mostly at market parking lots or outside marriage palaces.This is why, the Scorpio-borne accused narrowed down on Rahul, before targeting his SUV.” Police said that Arshdeep alias Arsh used to work as part time taxi driver and would take up odd jobs.
Love for guns
The police officials said that all the accused are from farming background. As per information, accused Ajaypal is the only son and belongs to a landlord farmer family owning about 60 acre at Moosewal village. Even though Ajaypal belongs to a well to do family but has resorted to criminal activities including robbing of cars, said police.
His love for guns and need to earn the tag of big gangster like Vicky Gounder was acting as a motivating factor, said police. We are also looking if they have any links with high-profile gangsters and weapon suppliers operating in Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, said a police official.
History of robberies
During investigation it came to fore that on October 8 last year, an Innova car was robbed at gunpoint from outside K C cross hotel in Panchkula. Also, last year on November 15 a Verna was robbed from outside a gym in Panchkula and on August 15, a Toyota Fortuner was taken at gunpoint from the parking area of Sona Grand Marriage Palace, in Jagraon near Mullanpur. On January 7, 2018 a Toyota Fortuner was robbed from Brew Estate Panchkula.“After robbing the cars, they used to sell the vehicles in Punjab, Rajasthan and Delhi. We have formed teams to recover the robbed cars,” said the SSP.
House owner booked
The police have also booked the owner of the house, 1028, under 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant) of the IPC for not getting the verification of the tenants done. The accused has been identified as Yadwinder Kumar Sharma.
CIA member Gurtej Singh said, “After we found the SUV, we waited outside the house for somebody to come out to drive the car. We had deflated a couple of tyres of the SUV.”
“However, later a motorcycle without a number plate parked outside the house, increasing our doubts, following which, we proceeded to question the three accused,” said Gurtej.
