Techie thrashed, ₹1.25 lakh robbed in 13th lift-and-loot case in Gurugram this year

The accused took pictures of the victim’s ID cards, saying they will hunt him down and kill him if he reported the case, police said on Wednesday, adding that they have identified the gang behind this and would soon arrest the suspects.

In the 13th lift-and-loot incident this year, a 33-year-old software engineer was kidnapped, assaulted, gagged, bound and robbed of ₹1.25 lakh cash at gunpoint. Then the accused took pictures of his ID cards, saying they’d hunt him down and kill him if he reported the case, the police said Wednesday, adding that they have identified the gang behind this and would soon arrest the suspects.

The victim said the accused kept threatening him until they withdrew ₹1.25 lakh from his two accounts from three locations over the next four hours. (AFP/picture for representation)

The incident took place Tuesday morning when the victim, Chandersawar Pratap Narayan, hitched a ride from Atlas Chowk to go to his office near Subhash Chowk, police said, adding that the ordeal lasted four hours.

On Tuesday morning, Narayan, who lives in Delhi, boarded a bus from near his residence for Gurugram and got down near Atlas Chowk. Around 10am, when he was waiting for a city bus, a private car — modified and orange in colour — stopped and the driver offered to drop him at Subhash Chowk, which is about 12.5km away. Since it was daytime, an unsuspecting Narayan took the offer, the police said.

“Three people, including the driver, were inside the car. After five minutes, when we were still on the expressway, the passengers took me at gunpoint and knifepoint. People could see me struggle, but no one intervened, helped or informed the police,” Narayan stated in his complaint lodged on Tuesday evening after he had made his way back to Delhi and then again travelled to Gurugram to report the matter.

“One of the accused snatched my cell phone, and the other snatched my wallet, which had my two ATM cards and ₹6,000 cash. It happened within 20 minutes,” Narayan said, adding he was beaten and forced to share his PINs. According to the complaint, the driver took a U-turn from the Rajiv Chowk underpass, and then they taped Narayan’s eyes and mouth shut, and told him to lie down on the rear seat as they kept driving towards Delhi.

The victim said they kept threatening him until they withdrew ₹1.25 lakh from his two accounts from three locations over the next four hours. All this while they were on the phone with people they called Sandeep and Rajesh, the complaint stated. Once the money was withdrawn, they informed them that “the work is done”.

After withdrawing the money, the accused, two of whom were being called Dinesh and Rambeer, clicked pictures of Narayan’s Aadhaar card, voter identity card and driving licence. They said that if he reported the incident to the police, they would find him and kill him, police said.

Around 1.30pm, the accused left Narayan at an isolated spot near Ghaziabad, from where he took help of a cab driver, who dropped him near Dilshad Garden Metro station in Delhi and called the police control room.

“Police told me to register my case at a Gurugram police station. I returned home and lodged a complaint in evening,” Narayan said. An FIR was registered under Section 379A (snatching) of the Indian Penal Code.

According to the complaint, the suspects kept saying they would be “identified” as “they were wanted in many cases”. “We have received CCTV footage from different locations in Delhi and Gurugram. The gang involved in such incidents has been identified and its members will be arrested soon,” ACP (crime) Shamsher Singh said.

The police said they have zeroed in on the names of suspects from Mewat, who have been involved in such cases.