Two held for shooting school cashier, robbing her of Rs 5 lakh

Police said Dalal is a known associate of gangster Kapil Sangwan, who is currently in Bhondsi jail. They said Dalal, through Sarita, passed on information about the woman cashier’s routine visits to the bank.

Four days after a private school cashier was shot and robbed of the Rs 5 lakh that she was carrying to deposit in a bank in west Delhi’s Mohan Garden, police on Monday claimed to have solved the case and arrested two men.

Four days after a private school cashier was shot and robbed of the Rs 5 lakh that she was carrying to deposit in a bank in west Delhi’s Mohan Garden, police on Monday claimed to have solved the case and arrested two men. (File Photo)

Police said the robbery was planned by jailed gangster Joginder Dalal alias Leela from Tihar jail and his wife, Sarita Dalal, acted as a conduit, carrying information between him and his gang members. The woman, currently on the run, also helped procure weapons, police said.

While 19-year-old Atul Pradhan from Haryana’s Jhajjar was arrested for executing the crime, police booked his friend Mayank for providing him a scooter, which he used in the crime. The scooter and ₹35,000 of the loot were seized from the duo, the police said.

Police said Dalal is a known associate of gangster Kapil Sangwan, who is currently in Bhondsi jail. They said Dalal, through Sarita, passed on information about the woman cashier’s routine visits to the bank.

“Dalal’s wife often visited him in jail. She passed on information about potential targets and instructions from Dalal to his gang. She procured weapons on her husband’s directions and handed it to the two men,” Anto Alphonse, deputy commissioner of police (Dwarka), said.

Alphonse said the robbery took place around 4pm in a lane in the rear of the school. The woman told the police that she left school around 2pm with her colleague, a computer operator, on his scooter to deposit the money.

“Since the bank’s server was down, she was walking back to the school alone, when a man, who was waiting in the lane, brandished a pistol and asked her to hand over the money. He then fired a bullet to scare her. She sustained a gunshot wound to her ankle. The robber fled with the money,” Alphonse said.

A robbery case was registered and investigators scanned footage from around 70 CCTV cameras near the crime scene and the routes the robber could have taken. One of the cameras captured the crime, which took place in under a minute. Another camera showed the suspect fleeing on a scooter, the police said.

“The scooter’s registration number was captured by a camera. We established the vehicle’s ownership and raided its owner’s house in Najafgarh from where it was recovered. The scooter owner, Vaibhav, claimed his friend Mayank had borrowed his scooter for some personal use. Mayank was detained and he revealed that he had given the scooter to his friend Pradhan,” the DCP said.

Raids were conducted in Haryana and Delhi and Pradhan was caught from Delhi’s Bindapur. “Pradhan revealed that he only kept Rs 45,000 (Rs 10,000 he had spent) from the loot and gave the rest to Sarita. Our teams are looking for her,” Alphonse said.