In what appears to be a pre-planned robbery, three masked bikers robbed two Mumbai-based diamond merchants while they were returning to their hotel in Karol Bagh on Wednesday night. They were robbed of jewellery worth over a crore in Central Delhi’s Desh Bandhu Gupta Road area on Wednesday night. The victim identified as Satish Shah had arrived in the Capital along with his associate Anand Rajpura on Tuesday morning to sell jewellery to buyers in Central Delhi.
According to the police, the mugging took place around 8 pm on Thursday when Shah and Rajpura were on their way back to their hotel in Karol Bagh when three youths wearing balaclavas intercepted their car. One of the youths broke the window pane with a hockey stick and hit Rajpura before snatching a black bag, which contained diamond jewellery and Rs1 lakh in cash. In his statement to the police, Shah revealed that around 7.30 pm after showing their designs to jewellers in the area, the duo was retuning to the hotel in an Indica and was near Dev Nagar area when bike-borne assailants attacked them.
“The youths first broke the window with a hockey stick and attacked Rajpura. They punched my face and cocked a firearm to my temple before fleeing with another bag of jewels in my person. The youths thrashed us and fled the scene on their bike,” said Shah.Police officials revealed that after arriving in the Capital, the duo had hired their known driver Naseem to trawl the city.Shah and Rajpura on Tuesday first checked in to their hotel and then met their contacts in Chandni Chowk. On Wednesday morning, they first went to Moti Nagar and then Pitampura where they met a friend, owner of a jewellery shop and showed their designs to other shopkeepers as well.
Those involved in the heist appeared to be professionals as they managed to burgle in a crowded area. They managed to escape unchallenged as they knew the area well, said a police official involved in the investigations. Police teams are working on leads, he added.