ROBBERS DECAMP WITH `3 CRORE GOLD FROM FINANCE COMPANY BRANCH IN JALANDHAR

IN 15 MINUTES Six men strike at unguarded branch of Manappuram Finance Company, take two employees, NRI customer hostage; insider’s job suspected

JALANDHAR: Six men robbed an unguarded finance-company office here of 10-kilogram gold worth `3 crore and `30,000 cash on Monday.

At 12.25pm, two employees — assistant branch head Naresh Kumar (27) and Ankit Gupta (26) — besides NRI (nonresident Indian) customer Ram Lal (40) of Parasrampur village, were at Manappuram Finance Company’s Rama Mandi branch on the Hoshiarpur highway when the robbers came in and took them hostage.

“Two men came in posing as customers and Gupta locked the scissor gate behind them as is practice,” Kumar recalled. “When I took them to my cabin, another four men knocked at the gate, and as soon and Gupta opened it, they pointed a gun and a knife at him and the customer. The two men in my cabin pounced on me for locker keys.”

He says they took him to the strong room and forced him to open it at knifepoint. “They filled their two black bags with the ornaments and the money and pushed the three of us into the washroom, which they couldn’t close because it didn’t have a bolt on the outside. They also took away our mobile phones,” said the assistant branch head. Asked why he had not pressed the alarm button in the washroom, he said: “I was in shock. I called up police soon after getting out.”

The robbers were out by 12.40pm. NRI customer Ram Lal says robbers were Hindispeaking and aged between 20 and 25. “Only one of them had his face covered. He wore a cap,” he said. Company cleaner Reeta, who was at a nearby bank for personal work, returned at 1.30pm to find the branch robbed.

The security-camera footage shows that the robbers came in on two motorcycles and a scooter. The branch has three cameras, all controlled from the headquarters in Kerala. Police suspect it to be an insider’s job. The employees are under interrogation.