New Delhi, Dec 09: Five men, masked and armed, stormed into a bank in East Delhi, overpowered the two security guards, held the staff hostage, robbed it, and disappeared — all in less than four minutes on Tuesday afternoon.
The robbery is one of the quickest in the city in recent memory — so quick that no one even got time to raise an alarm, according to an officer. While two other bank branches lie close by, with four security guards on their premises, no one got a whiff of the action on the first floor.
The police arrived soon but by then
the assailants had long gone, with Rs 7,50,000 in cash.
According to the police, the incident took place at 3.15 pm when five men wearing helmets and armed with countrymade pistols entered the Development Credit Bank (DCB) in New Kondli, Mayur Vihar Phase-III, close to the Delhi-Noida border. Within minutes, and without firing a bullet, they went away with all the cash they could lay their hands on — leaving behind only their images on a CCTV camera.
The police have registered a case and said they are looking at CCTV footage.
Joint Commissioner of Police (New Delhi) Dharmendra Kumar said the assailants first overpowered Mahesh, the armed bank guard, at the stairs and carried him to the first-floor branch. There, outside the door, they hit the second guard, Krishna, on the head with the butt of a pistol and made their way in.
“They asked the seven bank employees to assemble at one place, locked them in a room and took the money,” Joint CP Kumar said. “All this happened in less than four minutes.”
The bank is next to a State Bank of India branch and the adjacent building houses an HDFC Bank branch.
“I was standing here but neither I nor the others heard any noise that could have alerted us,” Ashok Kumar Singh, the guard at HDFC Bank, said. “We learnt about the robbery when the police arrived.”
Deputy Commissioner of Police (East) Anand Mohan said, “We are looking at CCTV images that we got from the bank. They (footage) are proving helpful.”
According to an officer, a forensic team lifted possible clues from the spot and the police have recorded statements of bank employees who were made hostage. The employees have said the robbers carried countrymade pistols and were wearing helmets, so they could not see the faces, the officer said.
A woman named Baby, who cleans the premises, gave another version: she claimed to have seen the men arrive in a “Santro-like” car and that one of them was already in the branch and gestured from the window for his accomplices to come up.
The police, though, refuted the version.
Officials at New Ashok Nagar police station said they are coordinating with Uttar Pradesh police since the bank is located close to the Delhi-Noida border and the assailants could have escaped to UP.
–Agencies