Men hijack van with Rs 2 crore in cash, later abandon robbery bid
The money had been loaded into the vehicle from an SBI branch in Gandhidham. The thief abandoned the vehicle on NH-41 and escaped after getting into another car with his associates.
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The incident took place at around 11 am at Swami Vivekanand Circle, which is also known as Banking Circle due to a large number of bank branches in the locality.Robbers hijacked a van on Friday morning soon after it was loaded with Rs 2.13 crore in cash from a branch of the State Bank of India (SBI) at Gandhidham town in Kutch but abandoned the vehicle on National Highway 41 after a hot pursuit by police personnel and private cash handling agency staffers, to whom the van belonged.
The incident took place around 11 am at Swami Vivekanand Circle, which is also known as Banking Circle due the large number of banks there. The police said that after loading the cash in the van, the staff of the private agency decided to have breakfast near the bank itself.
“While the agency staffers were having breakfast, a man approached the van, opened its door with a duplicate key and started speeding away,” Kutch (East) police SP Sagar Bagmar told The Indian Express, adding that the agency was supposed to refill ATMs with the cash.
Bagmar said the agency staffers alerted the police and also chasing the robbers even as the van entered NH 41. “The police also started chasing the van. As the police and agency staffers closed in after aound 25 minutes, the robbers abandoned the vehicle and got into a private vehicle,” Bagmar said.
“A few men in a private vehicle that was tailing the van were helping the robbers. When it became certain that he would be caught, the robbers abandoned the van near Mithi Rohar village and got into the private vehicle,” he added.
Bagmar said the cash van was later taken to A Division police station in Gandhidham town. “We have recovered the entire amount from the van,” he added. The A Division police was in the process of registering an offence and efforts are being made to arrest the robbers, the SP said.
This is the fourth robbery in Gandhidham in around a year. Last May, four bike-borne men had barged into the office of a private courier firm, threatened the staff there with firearms and made away with Rs 1.5 crore in cash.
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