Nabha heist; Bank guard shot; 2 arrested

Aman Sood
Tribune News Service
Patiala, November 14

Two armed men on Wednesday shot dead a bank guard in Nabha and fled with Rs 50 lakh in cash before being arrested with the booty within four hours of the robbery.

Patiala SSP Mandeep Singh Sidhu said the accused — Jagdev Singh Tari, 35, and Amanjit Singh Guri — were friends and ran an oil tanker business in Sangrur. Amanjit’s father had retired as an inspector and served as Nabha SHO.

Around 11 am, two masked men on a bike shot bank guard Prem Chand in the chest from close range when he, along with clerk Antriksh Vaid, was shifting money brought in a private cash van to a State Bank of India branch. “As we were offloading the trunk containing the currency, two masked men asked us to hand it over to them. Before the guard could react, one of them opened fire and the two fled with the trunk,” bank officials told the police.

The police formed three teams, one to monitor mobile tower data, another to scour the CCTV footage of the area and the third to hunt down the accused. “A team recovered the trunk at some distance,” said the IG.

“The mobile tower location of the accused proved key. The two had followed the cash van a few times in the past fortnight and were aware of the route it took to ferry the money to banks,” said police official.

“The CCTV footage of a 3-km stretch within the city area used by the cash van over the past few days the area and the third to hunt down the accused. “A team recovered the trunk at some distance,” said the IG.

“The CCTV footage of a 3-km stretch within the city area used by the cash van over the past few days clearly showed the two tailing the vehicle,” he said. The footage showed the faces of the two accused. “A policeman identified one of them as the son of an ex-cop. The police later traced his phone to Sangrur and conducted a raid,” said the official.

Sources said the two had confessed to their involvement in two cases of robbery of lakhs of rupees in Sangrur. 

Bank officials had not informed the police about the cash transfer and there was no CCTV camera outside the branch. “We will recommend action against bank officials,” said Patiala IG AS Rai. Punjab DGP Suresh Arora announced a reward of Rs 1 lakh for the police team that cracked the case. SSP Sidhu later said the money would be handed over to the victim’s family. Sidhu was in Nabha to attend a function when the incident occurred.