Car thieves posing as cops nabbed; heist foiled

With a plan to commit major cash robbery soon, four men would dress up in Delhi Police uniforms to rob vehicles and their drivers in the south-western area of Delhi. With the arrest on three members of this gang on Saturday, the Delhi Police claimed to have solved at least four cases of vehicle robberies and prevented the heist they were planning.

The gang would allegedly thrash vehicle drivers before stripping and dumping them at isolated locations. The police said the victims were stripped in order to delay their complaint to the police and thus give the robbers enough time to escape.

While the first of the four known incidents of such theft took place in February this year, the other three were committed in a space of five days, beginning May 18.

Ashok Kumar was returning to Delhi from Gurgaon in his WagonR car when three persons in police uniform signalled him to stop. The accused got into his car and asked him to drive some distance, before signalling him to stop again. They took him to the back seat and thrashed him, and dumped him near a drain in Dwarka before driving away in his car.

The next day, an Alto-800 car owner filed a similar complaint in which he claimed to have unsuspectingly stopped his vehicle on being signalled by some men in police uniform.

The last of the incidents took place on Wednesday, when an auto-rickshaw driver was robbed, allegedly by the same gang, after they hired his vehicle from Janakpuri.

The police learnt that the three men involved in these robberies would be assembling near the Goyla-Rewala chowk on main Najafgarh Road on Saturday, following which they nabbed them.

Besides all the four vehicles, Delhi Police uniforms of assistant sub-inspector rank were recovered from them.

The arrested persons disclosed that they had planned to commit a big cash robbery of Hawala near Piragarhi Chowk, for which they needed cars, said the police.