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No time, no place safe in Gurgaon
The latest incident of an armed robbery at a businessman’s house in the high-profile locality of HUDA Sector 15 has made the residents quite nervous. With the rise in frequency of such crimes — especially this month — even the police are aghast.
The latest incident of an armed robbery at a businessman’s house in the high-profile locality of HUDA Sector 15 has made the residents quite nervous. With the rise in frequency of such crimes — especially this month — even the police are aghast.
R.S. Raghav, president of Sector 15 (Part I), said if the criminals were so daringly in a posh locality that houses top bureaucrats from the state government and police department, “how can residents in other parts of the city feel safe?”.
On Sunday, five masked assailants held the Kalra family of six, including a one-year-old toddler, hostage for 95 minutes.
The family was assaulted, and locked in the bathroom, while the robbers ransacked the house. The assailants then fled in two cars through the densely populated VVIP locality. Kalra, who wasn’t at home when the robbery occurred, said the robbers were ruthless and brazen.
“When my wife called one of the robbers beta (son), he slapped her. Sachin, one of my sons, was in the bathroom unaware the robbers. As he came out, the robbers turned furious. They assaulted my wife and my other two sons again for not disclosing Sachin’s presence in the house,” said Kalra, who got a call from his son at 12.54 p.m. about the robbery.
During the ordeal, the criminals, armed with guns and daggers, threatened to kidnap the one-year-old several times to extract maximum booty, he said.
According to Kalra, the robbers fled with valuables worth Rs 4 lakh. He said the assailants even took debit and credit cards from the family.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (West) V.P. Godara, who reached the spot with DCP (Crime) Anil Dhawan and a crime investigation agency team, said that an investigation had been launched into the case.
July has seen an exceptionally steep rise in the crime graph. On July 20, three men on motorcycle shot and killed a trader near Sheetla Maata Temple to rob him of Rs 8.5 lakh. On July 15, Rahul Sharma, a chartered accountant with Ernst & Young was abducted outside his office.
Robbers took out Rs 50,000 from his account using his bank debit cards.
