INDORE: Four
masked robbers
broke into a house in a
posh township
in Indore's Banganga area in the predawn hours of Friday, held a family of four, including two little kids, hostage and escaped with cash and jewellery and the victims' car.
The incident sparked panic in the area. Police are yet to identify any suspect but found the car abandoned in Rajgarh of Dhar district (around 110km from the crime scene), additional DCP Ram Sanehi Mishra said.
CCTV footage from the house has caught the
robbery
in terrifying detail. The gang is seen brandishing foot-long daggers and choppers and threatening the family as the kids, aged 3 years and 1 year, cower in their mother's lap in fear. The couple, Pushpendra and Akansha, are seen handling the tense situation calmly, as the robbers force them to hand over the jewellery they were wearing.
ADCP Mishra said the robbers broke into the house of Pushpendra Mittal, 32, around 4:30am. The gang climbed a tree to get over the wall and enter the society, said police.
Pushpendra, who works with a PSU, woke up with a shock as one of the robbers struck him with a stick. His wife and the kids woke up too. Four men stood menacingly in the room, holding weapons.
They told him to hand over all the cash and jewellery kept in the house. "I told them to take whatever they wanted and leave us. We gave them our rings. They stole Rs 10,000 cash kept in the almirah, along with wife's earrings, a gold chain, a DSLR camera and left the house," said Pushpendra.
"I kept praying that we wouldn't be harmed. We were in complete shock," he said. The gang took away the couple's cellphones and warned them not to leave the room as they escaped.
Ten minutes later, Pushpendra mustered courage and went downstairs to find the lock of the main gate broken. His car parked outside was missing. He woke up a neighbour and used his phone to call his father-in-law.
After a while, everyone gathered in the house and informed police. Pushpendra found his phone lying in the garden. Akansha's phone was hidden in another room. CCTV footage showed the gang leaving in his car.
Police said that the gang had probably recced the house when the family was out of station over the previous weekend. There was a guard at the main gate of the locality but no patrolling was done inside, ADCP Mishra said.
Three teams of crime branch, two teams from Banganga police station and a team from Dhar police are looking for the accused. "They were last traced to Badnawar in Dhar but they are constantly changing their location," Mishra said.
The incident has left residents in shock. "We have security guards but never imagined that such an incident could take place. Since it's a closed campus, there is no police patrolling in the area," said a woman.
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