Rs 1.33-crore Banur heist near repeat of Mohali

Akash Ghai

Tribune News Service

Mohali, May 2

Same amount, same bank, same van, same route and the same modus operandi!

The Rs 1.33-crore bank van heist at Banur today is a repeat of what had happened in Mohali in March 2015. At that time, Rs 1.34 crore was looted by armed robbers in Sector 85 here after chasing an Axis Bank van from Sector 34, Chandigarh. Today, Rs 1.33 crore was looted from the same bank van. The only difference between the two heists was the location.

In the Mohali heist, the district police had cracked the case within 24 hours by arresting eight robbers and had recovered Rs 1.28 crore. The undertrial robbers are lodged at the Ropar jail. This rules out the possibility of their involvement in today’s heist.

Both cases have striking similarities. Not only the route, timing, origin point and destination of the cash van were the same, the modus operandi of the criminals was also similar.

In today’s incident, six unidentified armed assailants looted Rs 1.33 crore from the cash van of Axis Bank around 10 am. According to the police, after loading the cash from the bank branch at Sector 34, Chandigarh, the van was on its way to Patiala when the robbers looted it. The cash was to delivered at the bank branches in Banur, Chika, Rajpura and Patiala.

The robbers were reportedly chasing the van from Chandigarh in a stolen Honda Amaze car while one of them joined his accomplices in a Scorpio near Banur. The assailants opened fire and looted the van after injuring the driver.

In the earlier incident, which occurred on March 9, 2015, eight masked robbers had looted Rs 1.34 crore from an Axis Bank cash van, which was on its way to the Patiala area after loading the cash from the same branch at Sector 34, Chandigarh. The criminals were chasing the van from Sector 34 in a stolen Fortuner and had intercepted it at a secluded place at Sector 85 around 8.30 am. The robbers were carrying pistols and axes with them. The robbers had smashed the windows and the iron grid of the van with axes while brandishing pistols. They had then driven away, leaving all occupants of the van behind. The van was later found lying abandoned at a field in Saneta village, around 5 km from the spot.