Woman hit, tied and robbed; victim’s sister, 3 others held
Police on Sunday cracked a case of daylight robbery in a house at north-west Delhi’s Shalimar Bagh with the arrest of four persons, including the victim’s sister.
The incident happened on Friday afternoon, when two robbers struck the house of one Brijesh Aggarwal, who runs a business in central Delhi’s Khari Baoli.
While Brijesh was away for work when the crime happened, his sister Aarti Aggarwal, wife Rohini and the couple’s fiveyear-old son were at home.
The robbers allegedly managed to lure the child into opening the door and held him hostage. While one of them had masked his face using a helmet, the other hardly cared to cover his face.
Rohini tried to fight the robbers, but was thrashed and tied up with ropes. They tied up Aarti too, who later emerged as one of the conspirators in the crime, to avoid suspicion, before raiding the safe and making away with ₹1.06 lakh cash, a gold ring and two mobile phones.
The robbers had locked the three inside the house and escaped on a motorcycle.
A complaint was subsequently lodged with the police, who launched an investigation into the incident. During the probe, the police scanned footages from CCTV cameras installed outside the house.
One of the cameras had captured the registration number plate of the motorcycle on which the robbers fled. That helped police make the first arrest — Mohammed Khan, the alleged mastermind, was preparing to flee Delhi when he landed in police net. On his interrogation, he revealed the names of others involved, one of which was Aarti herself.
According to Vijayanta Arya, additional DCP (north-west), Aarti and Khan were friends. They had spoken over 5,000 times over the last few months as they planned to execute the robbery.
“Khan and Aarti had accumulated a lot of debt. They thought robbing Aarti’s brother’s home would help clear their debts and give them the capital to start a garments trade of their own. The duo roped in two others to help execute the robbery,” said Arya.
Police said Aarti had stayed at her brother’s home at the time of the incident to avoid suspicion. They claimed to have recovered all the stolen items and cash, and also seized the motorcycle used in the crime.