Trio booked for stealing bag containing ₹10 lakh from Palam Vihar club

Three persons were booked for stealing a bag containing ₹10 lakh from a club in Palam Vihar during a wedding function on Saturday, the police said on Sunday

Three persons were booked for stealing a bag containing ₹10 lakh from a club in Palam Vihar during a wedding function on Saturday, the police said on Sunday.

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The police said they identified suspects through CCTV camera footage and are making efforts to track them.

“We are scanning the CCTV footage and are also quizzing the club staff in a bid to gather more information about the incident. We spotted a person in the footage who is shown picking up the bag (stuffed with cash) and meeting another person in the doorway. However, we still haven’t been able to find out how they escaped the club,” KK Rao, the commissioner of police.

The complainant, Manoj Kumar Gupta, a resident of Palam Vihar, said that the intruders took advantage of the situation as all family members were busy with ceremonies. “My mother was sitting on a chair and the bag was kept near her chair. When we called her to bless the couple, she left the bag below her chair and went to the stage. She was shocked to find the bag missing when she returned,” he said.

The incident took place around 10 pm, following which the family asked for the CCTV footage and reported it to the police around 10.30 pm. “We zeroed in on a man wearing a red T-shirt, who was seen walking out with the bag,” Gupta said.

He said that they tried calling a phone that was kept in the bag, but calls went unanswered. “As the phone has the option of tracking, we followed it and found it near a farmhouse in Bijwasan, but the suspects had fled. The suspects could have been caught if we had not dialled the mobile phone that was kept in that bag,” he said.

A CCTV footage of the road shows the suspect handing over the bag to another person who was in an Eeco van, said police.

A case was registered at the Palam Vihar police station under Section 380 (theft in dwelling house) of the Indian Penal Code on Sunday morning.

The family said that it was not clear how the police failed to ascertain the registration number of the car, as it had crossed the Delhi municipality’s Bijwasan toll that is equipped with high-density cameras.