Truck driver, cleaner waylaid, robbed of Rs 50k

Incidents of looting are being reported daily from several areas of the city. One such incident was reported from Beas village in the Bhogpur area where looters waylaid a truck and took away Rs 50,000 cash and a cellphone from its driver.

The incident occurred yesterday evening wherein three bike-borne looters assaulted the driver and cleaner of the truck. Despite receiving injuries on their heads, the victims chased the assailants with the help of a dhaba owner and managed to alert the Sadak Surakhya Force (SSF) teams. It helped the SSF teams’ arrest two of the three suspects.

The driver identified as Raj Kumar was reportedly driving an empty truck on the road heading from Kathua to Jalandhar when the incident happened. Kumar said he had stopped the truck at a dhaba to have dinner when the assailants jumped into the vehicle from both sides and took away all the cash and the mobile phone that he was carrying. “Since we resisted, the assailants hit me and my cleaner on our heads with a sharp weapon leaving us injured,” Kumar said.

Kumar said the owner of a dhaba at Beas village came to their rescue. “He made us sit in his car and chased the looters. We spotted them near a filling station. We quickly managed to nab one of the suspects, who had got off his bike, while the other two managed to flee. We handed him over to the police and returned to dhaba to have dinner. Almost an hour later, we again spotted two looters passing on a bike near the dhaba. We again chased them. In a jiffy, they left the bike in sugarcane fields and ran away. The police teams arrived on the spot. The police impounded the bike and managed to arrest another suspect,” Kumar said.

Bhogpur SHO Yadwinder Singh said, “Two suspects identified as Lovepreet Singh and Bhajan Singh of Rastogi village have been arrested. An FIR has been registered against the suspects on the basis of statement of the truck driver and cleaner.”