Phones worth ₹27 lakh stolen from south Delhi showroom by three thieves

two men donning long caps and covering their faces with a cloth entered the shop at 3.14am and started storing the mobile phones in a white gunny bag. A minute later, their third associate joined them and at 3.17am, an alarm started beeping

NEW DELHI

An alarm went off at the shop, located 200 metres from a police post, but the burglars got away. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

In a four-minute heist, three burglars made off with at least 100 new mobile phones worth over ₹27 lakh from a showroom in the Mahipalpur main market, near Vasant Kunj in south Delhi, on the intervening night of Wednesday and Thursday, police said.

The incident, which took place between 3.14am and 3.18am on Thursday, was recorded by a CCTV camera on the premises, but the identities of the burglars could not be established as they covered their faces, police said. No arrest was made as of Thursday evening.

Police found the burglars came to the store in a white Swift car. “They used a fake registration number on the white car. Their escape route was also tracked till Rangpuri on National Highway 48. More cameras are being checked,” an investigator said.

In the footage, which was seen by HT, two men donning long caps and covering their faces with a cloth entered the shop at 3.14am and started storing the mobile phones in a white gunny bag. A minute later, their third associate joined them and at 3.17am, an alarm started beeping. The three rushed to collect as many phones as possible before fleeing by 3.18am.

The showroom is located around 200 metres from a police booth, co-owner of the shop 42-year-old Satish Kumar said.

Police said the control room was apprised of the incident at 9.26am on Thursday by Kumar. Co-owner 39-year-old Vivek Kumar, Kumar’s brother, said the shop’s lock was broken when he reached it and ascertained the theft by scanning the CCTV footage.

A case on charges of theft was registered and an investigation was taken up, police said. They have also asked the shop owners for the IMEI numbers of the stolen phones for further probe.

Police said they will question the employees working at the shop to ascertain if any of them played a role in the events.