34-year-old man takes lift, gets robbed, thrown off car in Gurugram

A 34-year-old man was brutally assaulted and robbed of his belongings at gunpoint after he tried to hitchhike his way home from Gurugram last week. He was later thrown off the car in Sector 57, the police said.

According to the police, the victim, one Taraknath Banerjee of Ranchi, lives in a rented accommodation at Rangpuri in Delhi and works at an online trading company in Udyog Vihar.

The police said that after completing his shift, Banerjee left the office and flagged down a private car at Shankar Chowk around 8.30pm on September 13. He asked the driver to drop him at Mahipalpur. “When he boarded the WagonR car, four people, including the driver, were already inside. When he was about to board, one of the passengers on the rear seat asked him to sit in between, claiming that he had to get down at the next stop,” Shamsher Singh, assistant commissioner of police, said.

Banerjee told the police that after a few kilometres, when the car reached the DLF Phase 3 underpass, the ‘passengers’ started assaulting him and blindfolded him.

“The accused men threatened him and snatched away his gold ring, wallet, mobile phone and wristwatch. He was forced to share his ATM pin, after which they withdrew cash from his account in Sector 56. The accused men kept assaulting him until they withdrew the cash, and during the one hour journey, kept threatening him against disclosing the incident to anyone,” Singh said.

The amount of cash withdrawn was not confirmed, the police said.

The accused men threw Banerjee out of the car at an isolated place from where he boarded an autorickshaw and reached a private hospital in Sector 38.

After receiving first aid, he informed the police control room and a team from Udyog Vihar took down details of the incident from him. “We have lodged an FIR against four unidentified people under sections 379 (snatching) and 34(Common Intention) of the Indian Penal Code at Udyog Vihar police station. We are yet to trace the number of the cab. We will also check CCTV footage in the area to ascertain Banerjee’s claims,” Singh said.

Banerjee refused to comment on the details of the incident, saying that he was not in the right frame of mind to recall them again.