A SECOND dacoity in the very first week of New Year rocked the denizens today. According to Tukoganj police, about six dacoits broke into the house of Motilal Agarwal at 39 Kanchanbag at around 4 am today. They scaled the gate and wall of the neighbour with whom Agarwal’s house shares a common boundary wall and removed from its hinges a kitchen window located on the ground floor.
Agarwal told Hindustan Times that the dacoits ransacked two unoccupied rooms and, later, opening the kitchen door to the narrow backyard arrived outside the ground floor window of the master bedroom. One of the dacoits then reportedly thumped the window many times sounding as if someone was trying to break open the windowpane.
On hearing the noise the startled Agarwal couple woke up and as soon as they opened their door, the dacoits waiting outside pushed it open. While two men attacked Motilal Agarwal, the other two held his wife, Parmeshwari
Devi. After a scuffle Agarwal gave in, as a knife was put to a vein on his ankle and he saw that they were heavily outnumbered.
The thieves tied and gagged Agarwal with the piece of a saree and asked for valuables and keys to lockers of the room from his wife. After ransacking the master bedroom they asked for information on the rooms upstairs. When Agarwal’s wife said they were closed, one of the dacoits asked where her two sons and other family members were.
One of her sons had gone out with his family and one was sleeping alone upstairs. The light emanating from his room had been noticed by the dacoits for they asked her to open that door.
{{/usCountry}}One of her sons had gone out with his family and one was sleeping alone upstairs. The light emanating from his room had been noticed by the dacoits for they asked her to open that door.
{{/usCountry}}The dacoits took the crying woman upstairs. The sobbing of his mother brought Vikas Agarwal out of his room. He too was attacked and tied up like his father. The dacoits decamped with about Rs 40,000 in cash, jewellery (the worth of which could not be estimated) and four mobile phones.
They went back the same way that they had come. The dacoits ran off on foot crisscrossing nearby buildings from where a blanket dropped by them was recovered by a Tempo Trax (number MP 09 S 1336) standing near Hotel Rajshahi Palace.
The family members were able to free themselves within minutes of the dacoits’ departure and called up Tukoganj police.
Due to prompt action, all mobile patrol vans were alerted within minutes and on the basis of information provided by the victim’s family, a speeding vehicle carrying the thieves was spotted by the Khajrana police near the Bengali Colony Square.
The PCR van gave chase as the vehicle crossed the Ring Road and headed towards the bypass, where another PCR cut the vehicle off from the other direction.
However, the dacoits switched lanes and drove on the wrong side until speeding trucks coming headlong towards them led them to abandon their vehicle.
The dacoits fled off in the early morning mist, into the fields. A canvas shoe belonging to one of the dacoits was recovered from the filed and a blue pullover worn by another was found in the vehicle. Motilal Agrawal, who was brought to the spot by the police, identified these articles as belonging to the thieves.
After receiving reports of the incident DIG P S Phalnikar, SP Adarsh Katiyar, ASP Rajesh Hingankar, Tukoganj police station in-charge Arvind Tiwari and MIG police station in-charge R S Jhala arrived on the spot.
The sniffer dog went some distance traversed by the dacoits on foot and came back from where they had probably boarded
their vehicle from a building situated near the hotel.