Two of lift-and-loot gang confess to involvement in 9 cases in 2 months

On March 14, Sumit Kumar, 26, and Sandeep Sharma, 24 – both from Ghaziabad — were arrested from DLF Phase 2 area while they were out to trap people.

Two suspected members of a lift-and-loot gang, who were arrested last week, have confessed to have been involved in nine cases in which people were offered shared rides and robbed over the past two months, police said on Monday.

Two suspected members of a lift-and-loot gang, who were arrested last week, have confessed to have been involved in nine cases in which people were offered shared rides and robbed over the past two months, police said on Monday. (AFP)

The third member of the gang, Yogi, whose car was used by the gang, is on the run and multiple teams are trying to nab him, said Rajiv Deswal, deputy commissioner of police (DCP) (crime). “All three of them are from Ghaziabad and were neighbours. Yogi was also there with the other two accused when we arrested them, but he managed to escape,” the DCP said.

On March 14, Sumit Kumar, 26, and Sandeep Sharma, 24 – both from Ghaziabad — were arrested from DLF Phase 2 area while they were out to trap people. They were later sent to police custody for three days. On Monday, the two accused were sent to Bhondsi Jail by a city court after the police custody ended.

Kumar, along with his friends Sharma and Yogi (yet to be arrested), had planned to rob people in Gurugram after reading news of such robberies in the newspaper, police said.

“Police stations in whose limits the nine cases were reported have been informed and in most cases, FIRs had already been filed,” said Raj Kumar, sub-inspector of crime investigation agency (CIA) sector 39. Police had seized the Vento car and also a lighter which looked like a pistol, which was used by the accused to threaten the victims. Police said that the car was bought by Yogi from someone else and police were looking into the sale records of the vehicle.

There have been 22 such cases in 2019 and last week, such a gang was busted by the Delhi Police . Members of a gang involved in the same crime were arrested by Gurugram police in January.

In the last two months of 2018, about 15 such cases were reported mainly from the main junctions along the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway. On December 17, the police busted a gang that allegedly robbed people after offering them shared cab rides.

Hundreds of people still take shared rides in cabs to return to their house after work owing to lack of public transport in the city. The areas from which people take shared rides include Rajiv Chowk, IFFCO Chowk and Shankar Chowk.

“There are two or more such gangs which operate in Delhi, Faridabad and Gurugram and we are trying to nab them. Four teams of the CIA are working on detecting them and 90 policemen have been deployed on the vulnerable stretch from Sirhaul toll plaza up to Rajiv Chowk,” Deswal had said on Friday. Police officers are even posing as decoy customers and taking shared rides from different locations.