Shops burgled, burnt in CR Park

The calm and quiet of Chittaranjan Park in southeast Delhi was disturbed with incidents of burglary at two showrooms, which were then set up on fire on Sunday night. HT reports.

The calm and quiet of Chittaranjan Park in southeast Delhi was disturbed with incidents of burglary at two showrooms, which were then set up on fire on Sunday night.

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The thieves targeted two mobile phones showrooms and unlocked the hi-tech security system installed at one of them. They got away with 130 cellphones of different brands, computers and some loose cash.

The police are now trying to ascertain whether the notorious 'burgle and burn gang' is behind the incident or some other gang copying this modus operandi.

The shops are located in Pocket K-1 in CR Park - one Spice Hotspot franchise and one Blackberry and Nokia showroom belonging to the owner of the building, Gurnam Singh.

According to police, the thieves struck around 4:30am.

Police also believe that an insider might be involved. "We had installed a trip wire alarm system. If anyone tried to open the shutters, it would trip the alarm, send an SMS to me as well as our security agency in charge. But the thieves cut the wire first and then entered," said Gurmeet Singh, liaison Spice Retail Business.

He added the thieves knew about the CCTV camera inside the showroom and took away the footage in the computer. They then broke open the locks and took away around 25 phones. They then set fire to both the shops.

Around 5:10am, the neighbours made the first PCR call.

"They called us and informed about the fire and then the owners were called," said a senior police officer.

The second PCR call was made by one of the employees of the Spice showroom at 7:18am.