Elante carjacking accused nabbed

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 23

Two persons who had robbed a Honda City at gunpoint outside Elante Mall in the city last month have been arrested by the Crime Branch of the UT police.

The accused have been identified as Sukhdeep Singh and Bharpur Singh, both residents of Samrala in Ludhiana district.

The police said the accused had escaped to Samrala with the robbed car. On August 26, the car had met with an accident near Samrala. Then, the Punjab Police did not know that the car was robbed. However, they got suspicious later and started verifying the ownership of the car from the RLA, Chandigarh. Crime Branch sleuths got the information that the vehicle had met with an accident in Punjab. Acting swiftly, the UT police nabbed the accused whose identity Punjab cops already had.

On August 10, the duo had forcefully taken the car from a woman outside Elante Mall, hardly 200 metres from the Industrial Area police station.

The victim, Nidhi, was driving her friend’s car while returning from a Teej party at Zirakpur. Nidhi’s family was at Elante so her friend offered to drop her outside the mall.

The victim stopped the car near Gate No. 3 and as she got down from the car, a pedestrian came there and pointed a gun at her. She screamed after which her friend also got down from the car. While one of the accused, who was carrying the gun, sat on the driver’s seat, his accomplice sat on the next seat. The duo then sped away from the spot. 

Came to city only for carjacking

The accused, who are drug addicts, arrived in the city on August 8 with a motive of robbing a car. They stayed at the railway station for two days. However, they could not find any victim. They then reached the Industrial Area and started looking for a victim. On finding two women alone, the accused decided to rob them of their car.