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Gurgaon: Robbers continue to target commuters seeking lifts at night
On Saturday, a man was robbed of his bag containing ₹25,000 cash, ATM and ID cards
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Instances of people of being robbed— and murdered in some cases— after being offered rides in cabs during the night hours are on the rise in Gurgaon. On Saturday, a cab driver and his two associates allegedly abducted and robbed a man on Saturday night after offering him a ride from Iffco Chowk.
While the man was lucky to escape with his life, an engineer with an auto company was not so fortunate. Last December, he had taken a ride from unknown persons and his body was recovered from the forested area near Mahipalpur the next day.
The Gurgaon police said that several people were robbed of their vehicles and valuables after they opted for lifts from unknown persons.
The three accused in the Saturday incident had dumped the cab driver, a Dharuhera resident, near Paras hospital after beating him up badly. A case was registered against the accused on the complaint of the victim, Ashish Kumar, at the Sector 29 police station. Kumar was taken to the Civil Hospital in Gurgaon for treatment, police said.
The complainant told the police that he works with a telecom company in Nehru Place, Delhi, and on Saturday he was on way home to Dharuhera, Rewari district, when the incident took place.
Kumar said that he took a ride from three men in a Santro car near Iffco Chowk around 11pm and they agreed to drop him in Dharuhera. However, when they reached Sector 29, the accused took a left turn towards Signature Tower and when he protested to this, one of them hit him in the face with brass knuckles and that left him dazed. Thereafter, the accused threatened him and snatched his bag containing Rs 25,000 cash, four mobile phones, Aadhaar card, PAN card, voter ID card and 8 ATM cards.
The assailants later dumped him near the Paras hospital in Sector 43 from where he was taken to the hospital by the police. ASI Sandeep Kumar said a case under Section 379B/34 of the Indian Penal Code was registered against the three accused and they are probing the matter.
On December 14 last year, a 27-year-old auto executive, Sunil Kumar Bhatt, was found dead in the Mahipalpur forest area of Delhi after he took ride in a cab from Gurgaon.
Bhatt, an engineer with Manesar-based automobile company Denso India, had hitched a ride from unknown persons from near Gurgaon bus stand. He was supposed to go to Haridwar in Uttarakhand to attend a family function. The police later arrested three persons in the case. The accused had taken away Bhatt’s debit and credit cards, withdrawn cash using them and then shopped in Delhi.
On March 13, three men in a Maruti car allegedly robbed Nitin Kumar, a resident of Uttam Nagar in Delhi, in a similar fashion. The accused gave him a lift and later snatched Rs 2,000, his Motorola phone and 2 ATM cards from Kumar. A case under section 392,342, 506, 34 of the IPC was registered at the Sector 29 police station against the cab driver and his two accomplices.
It may be recalled that on February 28, Ajit Singh Bisht, a man working in a restaurant in CyberHub was abducted and forced to part with his ATM card, which the assailants used to withdraw Rs 75,000 from Bisht’s account. The accused later Bisht at a secluded spot in Sector 49.
As was the case with Kumar, the accused had given Bisht a ride in their cab and beat him up when he refused to share his ATM PIN with them. The accused then pointed a gun to his head and Bisht was forced to share the details with them. Bisht’s hands were tied and he was blindfolded by the accused who told him that they had taken only Rs 2,000 from his account.
Later, Bisht complained to police that the accused had withdrawn Rs 75,000 from his account, which he had saved for his sister’s marriage. “These incidents have become a cause of concern and they are being probed by multiple teams,” Ravinder Kumar, public relations officer, Gurgaon police, said.
