Daylight robbery: Rs4.5m looted in bank heist

SHO from local police station chides bank guards for not running after robbers.

ISLAMABAD:

Six armed men on Thursday robbed Rs4.5 million in one of the biggest bank heists of the capital that too near a police station in Koral on the outskirts of the city.

The robbers entered the bank in a busy market in the Khanna Pul area at 10am and made the staff and customers hostage for 20 minutes.

The Koral Police Station is located close to the market, but the police failed to chase the robbers despite being alerted.

“Initially, three robbers entered the bank and got hold of me,” said Mazhar Mushtaq, a security guard performing duty at the bank. He said that later, three more robbers entered the bank and locked the staff and the customers in a room before going on a looting spree.

The bank was open, but only four customers were inside the branch when the incident happened, he said.

The police have registered a case against unidentified robbers on the complaint of the bank manager.

The police have also issued sketches of one of the robbers.

The Koral SHO Jamshed Khan reportedly reached the spot half-an-hour after the incident. When asked why the police failed to chase the robbers despite being alerted and being present near the scene of the crime, he shifted the responsibility on the security guards who had been disarmed and locked in a room with other staffers.

“Instead of waiting for the police, the security guards should have chased them,” SHO Khan said.

A day earlier, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had expressed his concern over the poor performance of the capital police in curbing street crime. The minister had called the SHOs to the Punjab House and had told them to improve their performance or start job hunting.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 3^rd, 2015.