Rs 8.5L looted from finance firm

PK Jaiswar

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, December 9

Six unidentified armed men looted Rs8.59 lakh from a branch of a finance firm at Green Valley in the Chheharta area here in the wee hours on Sunday. The firm was operating from a double-storey house.

The suspects equipped with five pistols and sharp weapons scaled the wall and entered the house. They decamped with the amount after getting it from the locker of the firm. The suspects also took away the bike of one of the employees.

Baljit Singh, branch manager of Bharat Financial Inclusion Limited, said the firm had been running from a rented residential accommodation for the past nine years. He said a total of 10 employees were working in the office and of them, two were on leave.

At the time of robbery, he was sleeping on the ground floor while the remaining seven employees were sleeping in rooms on the first floor of the house.

He told the police that the suspects jumped the outer wall and entered the house. “The suspects went to the first floor and detained them. They asked for cash and were told that I had the money. The suspects took them towards the ground floor at gunpoint. They sought the keys of the locker, but I denied having any key. Thereafter, they thrashed me and threatened to kill me as well as my staff members,” he added.

“Fearing for life, I handed over the keys following which they took money from the locker and the bike of one of the employees parked in the varandah,” the branch manager added.

Vishaljit Singh, Assistant Commissioner of Police (West), said there was no security guard outside or inside the branch.

He said the police did have any information about the functioning of a finance firm from a residential area.

The police officer said a case under Section 395 (dacoity) and 342 (wrongful confinement) of the IPC had been registered in this regard.

Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police Lakhbir Singh said that the suspects would be arrested soon.