New Delhi, Dec 18: Eight armed robbers struck at a house in South Delhi’s upscale East of Kailash area, held the couple and their daughter hostage at gunpoint and made away with valuables and cash worth over Rs 20 lakh in the early hours of Thursday.
Victims Suresh Chutani, 58, and wife Raj Chutani, 55, are former councillor (1982-2002) and deputy mayor (1996-97) respectively, of Palwal, Haryana. The couple said they moved into 309, Prakash Mohalla, East of Kailash eight months ago, after their daughter, Ashi, got a job at a private firm in Okhla.
Ashi said the assailants seem to have done their homework right — to hide identity, they referred to each other by numbers, one to eight — and knew their way around the house.
According to the police, the assailants removed the glass window and then the iron grill to enter the house. According to the family, Suresh Chutani heard “a noise” and went to the first-floor balcony to check its source but returned to his bedroom satisfied.
Within moments, three robbers were in Ashi’s room after removing the grills. “They held a pistol and butcher knives to my head and threatened to kill me if I made any noise,” she told Newsline. “They took a towel from the bed and tied my hands and legs and gagged me with a handkerchief.”
The men then went to her parents’ bedroom.
Emphasising that the assailants were familiar with the house, Suresh Chutani said they even knew he owned a licensed semi-automatic pistol and asked him where he had kept it. Chutani did as told and after one of them took it from the cupboard, “I told them I would raise an alarm even if they killed me, and wanted my daughter in the room”.
After the robbers tied Suresh with a cord and Raj with her dupatta, “number three” was instructed to make tea. Ashi said the others meanwhile emptied the lockers.
According to the family, they took jewellery worth Rs 14 lakh, Rs 3 lakh cash and other items. “They took the pistol (worth Rs 5.5 lakh), four mobile phones and three designer watches,” the couple’s son Vikas, said.
The assailants had tea and snacks before making their way out. The family called the Police Control Room at 3.45 am. Ashi said though the police came within 15 minutes, they tried to register a case of theft, while the incident demanded a case of dacoity since more than five assailants were involved.
She said a case of robbery against unknown assailants was finally registered at Amar Colony police station “after much persuasion”. Newsline went to the police station to crosscheck the allegations but found the gate locked. A constable at the gate said the Station House Officer had asked him not to let in the media.
–Agencies