New Delhi: The Delhi Police on Saturday arrested four wrestlers, including an international gold medallist, in a case of armed robbery case. Two country-made pistols, five live cartridges, and a car with a fake number plate was also recovered from their possession.
The four have been identified as Dinesh, 30, Lakshay, 22, Hardeep, 27, and Robin, 28 -- all of them are residents of Delhi and were involved in a gun-point robbery at a grocery shop.
The incident took place on July 24 at about 10 pm when the complainant's servant was downing the shutter of his in Rohini. At that time, the complainant was in his car, with bags containing cash worth Rs 60,000, the shop ledger, keys, among other things. Three men in a car suddenly approached and robbed the complainant of the bags and fired at the servant before fleeing.
A police team was set up and CCTV footage scanned. But nothing much was gleaned from the footage due to the abstract angle of the place of occurrence and its distance, combined with the darkness.
The team made a layout map of Rohini Sector 18 and the places where the CCTVs were installed were marked. Three different teams checked all possible routes that could be used to enter and escape.
After the marathon exercise over eight days in which around 170 CCTV cameras installed in the vicinity were checked, a few clues were gathered.
"In fact when several CCTVs were checked, despite no clear visibility of vehicle number, some peculiarities of the white Swift Desire car used by the accused were noticed. It was found that the car has black wheel caps and only light (left side) of the number plate works. Though efforts were made to trace the car, it lost visibility within a kilometre of the incident. But that gave a direction to the team," said DCP Gaurav Sharma.
The team deployed sources and started conducting step-by-step search of the vehicle by increasing the range of the area over which the accused could have travelled. Finally, the team was able to trace the car.
On interrogation, the accused revealed that Robin, who worked as a driver and supplied cold drinks in the area, had identified the victim. On the day of incident, they reached the shop about 30 minutes before the incident and conducted a recce of the place.
When the complainant was about to shut his shop in the evening, Hardeep, Sachin and Dinesh left the car and robbed him at gunpoint.
Accused Dinesh, who used to sell bedsheets, was unemployed and in dire need of money as his wife was expecting a child. Robin's maternal uncle was also involved in wrestling till a few years back. He knew Hardeep, who used to practice wrestling in Sultanpuri. His nephew came up with the plan and they executed it.
Accused Lakshay, who has been wrestling for the last five years, won a gold medal in Thailand in 2017 at the Indo-Thai Championship. He joined the group out of adventure and was the one who fired at the servant.
Hardeep, who ran a factory with his father, incurred heavy losses and was also a wrestler. He used to practice in Kharkhoda Haryana and has practiced for eight years. Robin used to work with Hardeep's deceased brother and has a criminal case against him.
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