2 cars, motorcycle stolen at gunpoint, abandoned later

CRIME TOOK PLACE IN AREAS UNDER THREE POLICE STATIONS IN KURALI AND ROPAR; COPS LEFT BAFFLED

MOHALI: Officials of three police stations at Kurali and Rupnagar were left baffled over a mysterious case in which two masked gunmen stole a sedan, a sports utility vehicle (SUV) and a motorcycle on Monday in the Kurali and Ropar areas and abandoned them later.

Sources who did not wish to be identified said two gunmen, one wearing a mask and the other with a cloth covering his face, stole the bike first and then the other two cars within a span of 50 minutes before disappearing, leaving the police groping in the dark 24 hours later.

The sequence of events pieced together reveal that the men first stopped a Splendor Pro motorcycle driven by Nadeem Ahmed near his village Lakhnaur at around 2 pm. They then threatened him with a gun, pushed him and fled with the vehicle.

Minutes later, they left the bike and carjacked a Maruti Dzire near a liquor vend at Charheri village on the Kuraliropar bypass road from Pardeep Kumar, a resident of Phase-7 here, and drove towards Ropar. Then, while approaching the Bheora village bridge, they snatched a Toyota Fortuner from Ramandeep Singh of Ghandoli village around 2.50 pm.

After driving towards the village roads to avoid the toll plaza on the highway and reaching Bindrakh road near a river, they abandoned the SUV and fled from the spot. Officials at the Sadar and City police stations in Kurali and the Sadar police station in Rupnagar later recovered the vehicles.