Gurgaon: One of gang which looted vehicle owners on highway held

The gang was involved in more than a dozen of cases and had robbed people of their mobile phones, gold and took out cash using their ATM cards after holding them at gunpoint.

The Gurgaon police arrested the main accused of a three-member gang which allegedly robbed people on the highway after taking lifts from them.

Thirty-two-year-old Parveen Kumar, the mastermind of the gang, was arrested on Thursday. (HT Photo)

The gang was involved in more than a dozen of cases and had robbed people of their mobile phones, gold and took out cash using their ATM cards after holding them at gunpoint. Police claimed that in one of the cases reported in August, the accused sodomised one of the victims.

The accused was identified as Parveen Kumar alias Fokee, a resident of Jhajjar. One of the gang members is already lodged in Bhondsi jail and another is still at large, said Ravinder Kumar, public relations officer, Gurgaon police.

According to the police, the gang targeted people at Iffco Chowk and Shankar Chowk. After soliciting rides to Dwarka and Bijwasan, Delhi, they used to assault the drivers and force them to reveal their ATM passwords before robbing them of their belongings, including mobile phones and laptops.

The accused lived in Palam Vihar in a rented house.

On August 21, the three-member gang took the lift from Iffco Chowk from a Haridwar(Uttarakhand ) resident who worked in a private company in Gurgaon and lived in Dwarka. The executive had left his office late, around 9:30pm, and when he crossed Iffco Chowk, he saw three people requesting a ride.

“The executive let them in and when they reached Dwarka, Delhi, the gang took him at gunpoint and assaulted him. They snatched his ATM card and withdrew ₹62,000 from his bank account. They robbed him of his gold chain and mobile phone,” Kumar said.

Before dumping him at an isolated location in Bijwasan, the gang tied his hands and legs and covered his eyes. They also allegedly sexually assaulted him, police claimed.

A case was registered under Section 365 (kidnapping ), 377 (unnatural sex), 201(causing disappearance of evidence) and 394 (voluntarily causing hurt in committing robbery) of the Indian Penal Code and under the Arms Act at Sector 18 police station, Kumar said.

Police have recovered the stolen mobile phone of the victim, cash withdrawn from the ATM and a countrymade pistol which was used in the crime. Police are further probing the case to know if there are more victims.

In another case, the anti-vehicle theft squad of Gurgaon police busted a vehicle lifting gang and recovered four motorcycles and one scooter from them. The crime branch of Sector 39 arrested a man from Badshahpur on Wednesday.