Dwarka cash van robbery case: Robbers took away ₹1.78 crore not ₹80 lakh

New Delhi: A day after two men armed with knives managed to allegedly abduct and then rob cashbox from a cash van’s guard man in Dwarka, the police have found

New Delhi: A day after two men armed with knives managed to allegedly abduct and then rob cashbox from a cash van’s guard man in Dwarka, the police have found that the robbed amount was nearly ₹1.78 crore and not ₹80 lakh as initially reported to them, a police officer familiar with the matter said.

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Four teams have been probing the case since late Friday evening. The four occupants of the cash van – two custodians, the gunman and the driver – continue to be under their scanner. The police said there were several lapses on the part of the cash replenishment company’s senior authorities in ensuring the security of the cash van.

An investigator, who asked not to be named, said that although a GPS device was fitted in the cash van, no real-time monitoring of the van’s movement was being done by the agency’s control room. Also, the van did not have an SOS alarm system, which is mandatory to be installed in cash vans, to avoid robbery attempts.

“The cash van is being inspected by forensic experts. The gunman’s questioning has revealed that he was not trained to deal with such a situation. That’s probably the reason that he did not fire at the robbers despite having a loaded rifle and the suspects only carrying knives,” the officer cited above said.

The robbery took place around 1pm on Thursday in Dwarka’s Sector 6 when the two custodians of the cash van had gone to refill cash at an ATM. Two knife-wielding robbers overpowered the van’s security guard, who was carrying a loaded rifle. The robbers got in the van and forced the driver to take them to an isolated spot before assaulting them and running off with the van’s cash box containing around ₹1.78 crore, the police said.