Amritsar Rural Police nab four for dacoity in grocery store owner’s house

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, April 3

With the arrest of four persons, the Amritsar Rural Police on Wednesday claimed to have cracked the dacoity case in which a grocery store owner and his wife were held hostage in their house by miscreants who looted Rs 15 lakh cash, besides gold jewellery worth lakhs.

Those arrested were identified as Ashok Kumar of New Jawahar Nagar, Batala road, Pawan Sharma of Ajnala, Gurpreet Singh, aka Gopi, of Rajasansi and Naresh Kumar of Amar Avenue in Court Road area in the city. The police also recovered Rs 11.70 lakh and a toy pistol used in the crime from their possession.

Superintendent of Police (Investigations) Harinder Singh Gill revealed that the accused were produced in a court, which remanded them in five-day police custody. He said as per preliminary investigations, an Ajnala resident tipped the accused about huge cash and jewellery in the house of victim Surinder Pal Sehgal, who runs a grocery store in the border township of Ajanala. He said efforts were being made to identify and arrest him.

Surinderpal Sehgal had claimed in the initial complaint that the armed accused decamped with Rs 16 lakh cash and ornaments worth Rs 25 lakh from the house.

He said as per his daily routine, he goes to his shop early in the morning. On the morning of March 29, as he came out of his house at around 5am, the robbers caught him at gunpoint and took him inside the house. They tied the mouth and hands of Surinder Sehgal and his wife with tape and threatened to kill them in case they tried to raise an alarm.

They knew that the couple was alone. The CCTV camera footage revealed that they were in the house for over half an hour. When they left the victim’s house, his wife called her son-in-law and later police teams reached the spot.

The CCTV camera footage revealed that the accused had been carrying out a recce of the house and waiting for the victim to come out of the house in the morning. As soon as he came out, they detained him at gunpoint.

Gill said accused Gurpreet faced two criminal cases (one of theft and the other under the Arms Act) and Pawan Sharma a murder case in 2004. Similarly, Ashok had two cases of fraud registered against him in Pathankot district.

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