47-year-old shot dead trying to fight men who snatched bag with ₹5 lakh

JUST ONE DAY BEFORE

THIS ATTACK, AT LEAST 50 BULLETS WERE FIRED AT A MAN IN OUTER DELHI’S KANJHAWALA

NEWDELHI: A 47-year-old man was shot dead when he fought back two snatchers who fled with his bag, which had ₹5 lakh cash, in south Delhi’s Dera village on Thursday night. Another man was hurt in the incident, and is being treated at Safdarjung hospital. The police are yet to identify any suspects.

The incident comes a day after at least 50 bullets were fired at a man in outer Delhi’s Kanjhawala while he was returning home.

In the latest case, near Fatehpur Beri, the incident took place between 9.30pm and 10pm when Ravi Singhal, an owner of a general store, and his helper Bhagwan Das, had closed the shop and were preparing to leave for home in the same neighbourhood.

According to the police, they received a call at 10.17pm at Fatehpur Beri police station, reporting that a shopkeeper was shot at by some unidentified men. Deputy commissioner of police (south) Atul Thakur said when a police reached the scene of crime, they found Singhal had sustained a bullet injury. Thakur added that they recovered one empty cartridge from the spot.

His helper, Bhagwan Das, suffered a head injury. Both were shifted to Safdarjung hospital, where Singhal was pronounced dead while Das was admitted for treatment.

“During the initial probe when we recorded Das’s statement, he said that around 9.30pm when they closed the shop, Singhal was carrying the cash bag. He said, three persons suddenly showed up on a motorcycle. One of them snatched the bag which Singhal had kept on the stairs, and tried to flee with it. On this, he and Singhal ran after him and also raised the alarm to call for help,” Thakur said.

Thakur said Das and Singhal had caught one of the men fleeing with money, when one of the other two accompanying him, shot at Singhal. “He said when he tried to catch them, they hit him on the head with a pistol butt and fled with the bag,” he said.

“Based on Das’s statement a case under the Indian Penal Code’s sections of murder, robbery, Arms Act and under other relevant sections has been registered,” he said.

Singhal’s daughter Anchal said since it was raining heavily on Thursday night, her father had shut the shop early. “My mother and I were waiting for my father when my cousin, who owns a shop next to ours, told us he had been attacked,” she said.

Anchal said, her father had received ₹5 lakh on Thursday from a chit-fund scheme in which he had invested. “He was returning with the money when he was killed. Usually, he returned only with ₹10,000 to 20,000. The killer knew he had a large amount with him,” she said.

Pammi Tanwar, a neighbour who works as a bouncer at a hospital, said it was the first time such an incident had taken place in the village.

“It is frightening if outsiders are coming to our village to target residents. Police must look into it. It looks like a planned crime. Night patrolling is also rare in our area,” he said.

However, Tanwar claimed that crimes are a rarity in the neighbourhood.

This was not an isolated case of robbers killing their victims in the national capital. In 2017 and 2018, more persons were killed in Delhi during robberies than they were in all other 18 Indian cities that have a population of over two million, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).

Moreover, the number of murders over robberies in the national capital spiked by 300% from 2016 to 2018, a period in which Delhi Police data shows a decline in the number of robbery cases by 48%. In 2018, at least 24 persons were killed over robberies in Delhi. In the same period, the combined murder during robbery in 18 other cities stood at 10.

While the number of murders over robberies that took place in 2019 is yet to be disclosed, the year had its own share. In September, CCTV footage showed a man getting stabbed to death by a gang of robbers in west Delhi’s Sagarpur.

Recently, on the eve of Christmas, a pedestrian was stabbed to death by another gang of robbers in Dabri. In June, an elderly couple and their domestic help were killed at their Vasant Vihar residence during a robbery bid.

While Delhi Police data shows that snatchings and robberies in the city have been declining over the past few years, only a small percentage of calls to the police control room (PCR) about snatchings get converted into FIRs.

Between January 1 and December 15 last year, the police received 55,556 distress calls from across the city to report snatching incidents, but only 5,898 (10.6%) snatching cases were registered in this period, according to official data analysed by HT.