New Delhi:
A 30-year-old man has been arrested along with his two friends for allegedly faking a robbery and misappropriating Rs 3.5 lakh of his employer to meet his financial requirements, police said on Monday. The accused Ajay had been working with a private company in west Delhi’s Vikaspuri for the last four-five years, they said. He had asked his employer to give him some money during the coronavirus-triggered lockdown. However, the company had refused, saying they themselves did not have enough money due to the lockdown and instead gave him Rs 1,500, police said.
Thereafter, Ajay along with his friends, Arun (33) and Raman (25), decided to fake a robbery. All of them, residents of Tilak Nagar, have been arrested, police said, claiming that they have also recovered Rs 1,39,000 of the robbed cash. The robbery was faked on October 12 in Vikaspuri. After the staged robbery, Ajay made a PCR call to mislead police and informed them that while returning from a bank after withdrawing cash for his employer, two men on a two-wheeler had allegedly robbed him of Rs 3.5 lakh, police said. A case was registered on the statement of his employer Neeraj Verma and an investigation was initiated, they said.
When the CCTV footage of the spot was checked, police observed that Ajay had himself stopped his two-wheeler near the alleged robbers and the activities of victim and the two robbers were found suspicious, a senior police officer said. On further analysing the CCTV footage of the entire route taken by Ajay, it was found that soon after withdrawing Rs 3.5 lakh from Indian Bank in Vikaspuri, he made calls to his friend Arun using the phone of one of the security guards, he said.
During interrogation, the accused initially did not co-operate. To probe his role in the incident, Ajay was set free and a police team was deployed in civil dress to keep a track on his activities. The mobile numbers on which he made calls from the bank on the day of the incident was identified and put on surveillance, said Deepak Purohit, Deputy Commissioner of Police (West). On October 17, the co-accused in the case — Arun and Raman — were tracked and arrested, he said.
A country made pistol and Rs 40,000 were recovered from Arun while a live cartridge, Rs. 99,000 cash and the stolen two-wheeler used in crime were recovered from Raman, he added. Subsequently, Ajay was also arrested and during interrogation, he confessed to his crime, the DCP said..