Armed robbers in the wee hours of Wednesday looted cash and valuables worth over Rs 8 lakh from the Luby Circular Road house of a coal trader and hard coke factory owner, Alok Jain, barely 300m away from the residence of Dhanbad SSP Kishore Kaushal.
Seven masked and armed criminals between the ages of 20 and 30 entered the palatial double-storey house by cutting the grille of a ground floor window, shimmying up and then opening the terrace gate. During the course of an hour, they held the members of the Jain family — most well-known for owning Saurabh Coke Industries at Panduki in Barwaddah — at gunpoint and cleaned the lockers of cash and jewellery in various almirahs of the rooms, and left from the front gate.
The men also took the digital video recorder of the CCTV camera and a scooter of the family but left behind a country-made pistol and a dagger.
Jain, his younger brother Saurabh, their respective wives and their mother were present when the robbery happened.
Jain told the media that criminals wielded country-made pistols, iron rods and daggers. He added, “The exact estimate of cash and jewellery looted is yet to be made.” However his family members put the figure of losses to around Rs 8 lakh.
A relative of the victim’s family said the Jains were in shock. “The only thing to be thankful for is that the criminals did not misbehave with any family member.”
Dhanbad SSP Kishore Kaushal said probe was on.
Dhanbad OC Navin Kumar Rai said they reached the house around 6.30am after they were told over phone about the break-in. “Though we have information that seven men entered the house, some more persons might be present on terrace during the incident. We seized the country-made pistol, dagger and some cloth pieces left behind by the gang. We deployed a sniffer dog too. The dog went towards a house in the locality but stopped after that,” he said, implying the trail ran cold for the sniffer dog beyond that point. Our forensic team is on the job.”
The window whose grille was cut by the intruders. Picture by Gautam Dey
