24-year-old man assaulted, robbed by three men in a moving car

A 24-year-old executive of a private automobile company was assaulted and robbed of his belongings at gunpoint after he tried to hitchhike his way home from Bhondsi

A 24-year-old executive of a private automobile company was assaulted and robbed of his belongings at gunpoint after he tried to hitchhike his way home from Bhondsi to Gurugram on Saturday evening. He was later thrown off from a moving car on Golf Course Extension Road, the police said.

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According to the police, the victim, Vikas Kumar Srivastava, a resident of Maruti Kunj in Bhondsi, works at a private company in Udyog Vihar. The police said that on Saturday at around 5pm he flagged down a passing Swift car at Bhondsi crossing for Subhash Chowk in Gurugram. He asked the driver to drop him at Subhash Chowk after crossing a flyover, which is a 15-minute drive from the spot where he boarded the car. “When he boarded the car, three people, including the driver, were already inside. After they reached Vatika Chowk, the driver took a sudden right turn towards Golf Course Extension Road. When he objected, the two other passengers caught hold of his arms and head and started assaulting him,” said Preet Pal Sangwan, assistant commissioner of police (crime).

Srivastava told the police that the two passengers blindfolded him and assaulted him. They threatened him and snatched away his wallet, containing ₹5,000. They also took away his mobile phone, gold bracelet, and a wristwatch. “He was forced to share his credit card PIN, after which they bought liquor bottles from a liquor vend on Golf Course Road for ₹6,000. The men kept assaulting him until they withdrew ₹10,000 from his account, and during the one-hour journey, kept threatening him for life and asked him not to make any noise,” Sangwan said.

The men threw Srivastava out of the moving car at an isolated place, from where he called his friend and boarded an auto-rickshaw and went to his house in Jharsa. After a discussion with his friend and his family members, he reported the incident to the police on Sunday late evening.

“The passengers and the driver did not seem like a gang at first. The driver had agreed to drop me for ₹20 and they did not have any conversation during the journey. Clearly, they were pretending,” Srivastava said, adding that he escaped with only minor bruises.

“We have lodged an FIR against three unidentified persons under sections 379 (snatching), 392 (robbery) and 34(common intention) of the Indian Penal Code(IPC) at the Bhondsi police station. We have recovered details of the cab and the suspects will be arrested soon. We have obtained CCTV footage from six locations,” Sangwan said.