Robbers looted another bank in Faisal Town on Monday in broad daylight, taking this year’s bank robbery count to eight. At around 10:50am, four unidentified armed men dressed in police uniform broke into a branch of Faysal Bank located at Maulana Shaukat Ali Road, near Jinnah Hospital, looted Rs 3.5 million and fled. It took them six to seven minutes to execute the robbery.
One of the men was wearing Elite Force uniform, two were wearing regular police gear, while one was wearing a white shalwar kameez, explained Faisal Town Police Station sub inspector. He said that they had arrived in a white Corolla (LEC 7449), which was parked at walking distance from the bank. The unidentified gunmen at first attacked the bank’s guard and then entered the bank taking the guard along. The inspector said that as the dacoits entered the bank, the usual patrolling police had arrived at the seen as they were on their routine patrol. “No one had called the police till then; they were just on routine route,” he added. He said that the dacoits attacked the policemen which included ASI Shamoon, constables Abubaker and Rashid, who were pinned down by the robbers. “No one had the time to call for backup; it took the robbers hardly 6-7 minutes to loot Rs 3.5 millions,” he said. The robbers looted the money and ran to their car leaving the weaponless policemen on the floor. Asfand Rehman, who was crossing the bank while the robbery was taking place, confirmed the robbers attire. He said that a man wearing white shalwar qameez got off of the car with another man wearing a police uniform and started beating the guard. “People were confused as they saw a policeman along with another man beating the guard, they couldn’t make out of what was going on”, he added. Another eyewitness Qaisar Khan Watto said that one of the policemen threw a pistol at the man wearing shalwar kameez which he dropped. “He stopped beating the guard, picked up the gun and started to fire openly creating panic,” he said. “People started to disperse from the area when they heard the guns shots and the traffic outside clogged,” he added. Faysal Bank is a small bank situated in a well visited car market on the road which dissects Johar Town from Faisal Town. Maulana Shaukat Ali Road remains busy most of the time as is accommodates people traveling to Johar Town, Faisal Town, Township, Link Road and other adjacent areas. Adding to that, Monday was the first day after the dengue holidays and the street was seen flowing with bumper-to-bumper traffic. All the eight banks were robbed between 10am and 1pm and are located on main roads. Robberies were witnessed in banks located in Township, Allama Iqbal Town, Choong and Factory Area.DIG Operations Ghulam Mehmood Dogar’s PRO Nayab Haidar denied the increase in bank robberies. “I don’t have any idea how many bank robberies have taken place this year. But in my point of view, bank robberies have decreased overall,” he said. CCPO Ahmad Raza Tahir and DIG Operations Ghulam Mehmood Dogar were not available for comments.
