Two days after Rs1.34 crore were looted from a cash van of a private bank in Mohali, the city police on Wednesday cracked the case with the arrest of eight people from different places in Punjab.
The Mohali Police, cracking one of the biggest robberies of the region within 36 hours, has recovered Rs1.29 crore from the possession of the arrested people. Around 10 armed men had looted the cash van of Axis Bank in the broad daylight on gunpoint near Saneta village in Mohali after attacking its five occupants with chilli powder.
The police had registered a case at Sohana police station under sections 392, 395, 397, 398, 400, 341, 148, 149 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and 25, 54, 59 of Arms Act. “Taking serious note of daylight looting on gun point, the district police had assigned investigation to CIA Staff in-charge Gurcharan Singh under the joint supervision of SP (Investigation) and ASP (Investigation)” said IGP (Zonal) Patiala Paramjit Singh Gill on Wednesday, while addressing the media.
Gill, accompanied by DIG (Rupnagar Range) RK Jaiswal and Mohali SSP Gurpreet Singh Bhullar, said that during a joint search operation launched by CIA in-charge and Banur SHO Manjit Singh, the search party got an information at Rurki Khan village that some suspected elements equipped with firearms and other weapons were planning for some big loot.
“The search parties cornered them and nabbed four criminals — Ranpreet Singh Rana alias Titu, a BTech graduate; Joginder Singh, Talwinder Singh alias Chann, and lakhwinder Singh alias Jagga — along with a car and one .32 pistol with five cartridges, one air pistol, one axe and two cutters. Their four other accomplices managed to sped away in another car,” he said.
Gill said after successfully following them the search party nabbed them at grain market near sector-38 west. Nabbed accused include Gurvinder Singh lally, Rahul Kumar aials MC, Parminder Singh and Buta Gir. The police party recovered one .32 pistol with four cartridges, one axe and one khanda from them.
During preliminary investigation, the arrested persons have admitted committing Rs1.34 crore loot, said Gill, adding that Rs1,27,70,000 have been recovered from them. “Gang’s kingpin is Ranpreet Singh Rana alias Titu who had planned this loot few days ago. They had snatched an SUV Fortuner to commit this crime in Sohana area on March 4. After committing the loot, they abandoned Fortuner in Banur and got separated to dodge the police. They again assembled in Chandigarh and divided the looted amount,” said Gill.
A number of criminal cases has been registered against Ranpreet in Mohali, Sohana, Mataur and Rajpura City police stations, while against Rahul, a number of cases has been registered in Rajpura city police station. Cases against Parminder Singh, Talwinder Singh and Buta Gir were registered in Mataur police station. Congratulating the Mohali Police, the State DGP Sumedh Singh Saini said that professional and time-bound action by the police would send a deterrent message to all offenders.