Case File | The ‘Special 21’ conmen who scripted a near-perfect heist

A crime reminiscent of 2013 Hindi movie, Special 26, was conducted in NCR by 21 people who posed as income tax and anti-corruption branch (ACB) officials and conducted a fake raid, only to get caught when greed and desperation took over.

New Delhi: At least 21 persons — 10 residents of Punjab, including two married couples, 10 more from the National Capital Region (NCR) and an “insider” — conspired for nearly 10 days to execute their near-perfect dacoity plan at the house of a money exchanger in Delhi’s Shahdara, a crime reminiscent of 2013-released Hindi movie Special 26 in which a team of tricksters pulled off robberies posing as Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officials.

The suspects found four plastic bags, but they all were stuffed with banknotes of lower denominations such as ₹10, ₹20, ₹50 and ₹100, leaving them frustrated.  (Reuters/Representative Image)

In the real plot, that was executed on July 3, 15 of the 21 conspirators, including the two couples who impersonated officials of the income tax (IT) department and anti-corruption branch (ACB), barged into the money exchanger’s four-storey building in Shahdara and conducted a fake raid, with the sole objective of getting hold of plastic sacks full of currency notes worth around ₹15 crore — as told to them by the “insider”, an employee of the money exchanger who was taking live updates on his phone in Punjab.

The impersonators planned the entire crime so perfectly that every step the 15 of them took inside the house was akin to what IT and ACB officials do during raids. They first showed their (fake) identity cards to the occupants of the house, seized the mobile phones of all family members, locked the house from inside, and asked the occupants to cooperate in the raid. On being asked about the search warrant, they threatened the family by saying that they all had firearms, an investigating officer of the case said.

Everything looked like a genuine raid to the residents of the house until the wife of the money exchanger asked the raiding team members why no police personnel in uniform from the local police station were present. The reply of one of the suspects, that “it’s Sunday and police personnel are on leave”, made the woman suspicious.

The suspects found four plastic bags, but they all were stuffed with banknotes of lower denominations such as ₹10, ₹20, ₹50 and ₹100, leaving them frustrated. The woman’s suspicion grew when the raiding team members started asking the family about the plastic sacks stuffed with currency notes in higher denominations.

As there were no such bags full of high denomination currency notes, the woman quickly went to the balcony and started screaming for help. Her screams drew the attention of some neighbours who gathered outside the building. This gathering made the team panic, who were already disappointed with the output of the raid, and they all rushed out. While 11 of them managed to flee taking advantage of the melee, four suspects, including a woman from Punjab, were caught by the public.

The police were informed and all four were handed over to them. They were identified as Navjot Singh, Satpal, Gurjant Singh, and Gurpreet Kaur. All of them were arrested and booked for dacoity, house-trespass, impersonating public servants, forgery, wrongful confinement, molestation and criminal conspiracy, a case was registered under Indian Penal Code’s Sections 395, 451, 170, 465, 471, 342, 354 and 120-B, said deputy commissioner of police (Shahdara) R Sathiyasundaram.

“The interrogation of the four arrested persons unravelled the entire conspiracy and led to the arrest of seven others following raids in Delhi-NCR, Punjab, and other neighbouring states. At least 10 suspects are still absconding. Efforts are on to nab them,” said DCP Sathiyasundaram.

The other seven arrested persons were identified as Simranjeet Singh and his wife Shreya, Parvinder Singh, who is a key conspirator, Mukul, an employee of the financer, Navin Sagar, Budh Prakash, and Rajesh Sharma. Another key conspirator Navjot Singh, who was also a link between the planners and executors of Punjab and Delhi-NCR, and Gurpreet’s husband, Gurpreet Singh, are among the absconding people, the police said.

How it started, how it ended

Sub-inspector (SI) Deshpal Mahaliya, the investigating officer (IO) of the case, said that around 6 30 pm on July 3, he was at a private hospital in east Delhi recording the statement of a 70-year-old man who was injured in a road accident, when he got a call from Shahdara Police Station, asking him to reach the spot in Shahdara, as the station house officer (SHO), Sanjeev Kumar Verma, was busy in a meeting with senior police officers.

SI Mahaliya reached the spot and learnt that four suspects had been caught by residents, while 11 others managed to escape, a few on foot as well and a few in two vehicles, including a Mahindra Thar, with snatched cellphones, a bag containing gold ornaments, and ₹15,000 in cash. A Mahindra Bolero car with a Punjab registration number was found parked some distance away from the victim's family’s house. The car was searched, and two stolen cell phones of the family members were recovered. The SHO and other senior officers also reached the spot.

When the four arrested persons were interrogated, they all tried to mislead the police by showing them their IDs and claiming that they were IT and ACB officers and it was a genuine raid. However, they could not give any satisfactory reply as to why their other associates fled. When they were confronted with certain queries about their jobs and departments, they all broke down and revealed the names of other absconding suspects. Several raids were conducted and seven other suspects, including Parvinder and Mukul, were arrested.

The near-perfect plot

The police said that Mukul disclosed that he had been employed by the money exchanger for a few months and his job was to pack currency notes into plastic sacks, and seal and transport them between the office and the businessman’s home. As the exchange of currency notes in all denominations happened in bulk, Mukul was of the view that the businessman kept crores of rupees at his home, and they all were unaccounted “black money”.

Mukul told his relative, Rajesh Sharma, about the huge flow of money. As stealing that money was not an easy task, Sharma gave that information to his friend Navin Sagar, who told them that such a huge amount can only be stolen through perfect planning. Sagar approached Budh Prakash, who had introduced himself to him as an informer of some officers in the Enforcement Directorate (ED). But Prakash had been befooling Sagar and was trying to dupe him of money in the name of securing a job for his son in the ED, the investigator said.

“Prakash had once met a person named Parvinder Singh at the ED’s Delhi office and the latter had introduced himself to him as an officer in the federal agency. However, Parvinder was a conman who looked for opportunities to dupe people, much like Prakash and Sagar. He had appointed Prakash as his informer. As Prakash trusted him as an ED officer, he met Parvinder and discussed the information regarding the availability of huge cash at the exchanger’s house,” the officer said.

According to the police, Parvinder told Prakash that the only way the money could be stolen was a fake raid. Everyone agreed to execute this plan and asked him to make all the arrangements. Parvinder contacted his friend, Navjot Singh in Punjab, and asked him to arrange for persons who could participate in the raid for money. He directed Navjot to arrange for some women but did not tell everyone about the fake raid.

Navjot contacted Gurpreet Singh and his wife Gurpreet Kaur, as he knew that the couple was in dire need of ₹1.5 lakh for surgery for their daughter, who was suffering from a serious heart ailment. The couple agreed to be part of the plan and they roped in their friends, Simranjeet Singh and his wife Shreya. The two couples and Navjot further added Gurjant, Satpal, Rakesh Sehgal and two others whose names are still not known.

Navjot also brought his friend in Delhi named Sunita Malhotra, whom he knew as an influential woman, and she assured him that the police will be “managed” in case anything went wrong with their fake raid. Malhotra told him that she knew some people who will be sent to the money exchanger’s house in police uniform, if need be, the police said.

After people for the raid were arranged, the next stage was fail-proof planning. On June 28, Navjot, Sehgal, Satpal, and Gurpreet came to Delhi and met Parvinder. They discussed everything about the plan and the people who will be involved. The four then went to a hotel in Kundli near Sonepat in Haryana and stayed there.

On July 1, all five met again at Palika Bazaar in Connaught Place, where they discussed their plan at length and the task of every member was defined. The entire group was divided into three teams. One team was of 15 people who had to conduct the fake raid. The second team was of Malhotra and two others who had to turn up at the house in police uniforms. The third team comprised Parvinder, Mukul, and others who were to get live updates and assist the raiding team in conducting raids and fleeing the area.

The execution day

The 10 people from Punjab arrived at the Kundli hotel in the early morning of July 1 and met Parvinder. From there, they left for Delhi around 9 am in the two vehicles. Around 11 am, they reached a tea stall near the Shahdara police station, where they met the third team led by Malhotra. Some of them then went to the neighbourhood where their target, the money exchanger, lived, and conducted a detailed reconnaissance of all the escape routes. They all met again at the tea stall and held a meeting during which everyone was updated about their roles.

Around 5 45 pm, apart from Malhotra’s team, everyone else left the tea stall in their three four-wheelers and reached the businessman's house. While Navjot led the 15-member raiding team, Parvinder stayed around 100 metres away along with his two associates, who were behind the wheel of the vehicles. Mukul was present in Punjab, giving live instructions to the raiding team over the phone about the places in the house where they should look for plastic sacks stuffed with currency notes, the police said.

“Everything was going according to plan. The two mistakes that the raiding team members did that landed them in trouble were expressing frustration and desperation after finding lower denomination notes in the sacks and telling the businessman’s wife that police were on leave on Sunday,” said the investigator.

The charge sheet in the case is likely to be filed by the end of this month.