In the 11th incident of its kind this year, robbers dressed in police uniform fled with Rs 4 million from a bank near Hamdard Chowk in the Green Town Police precincts on Tuesday and escaped safely while shooting in the air.
Investigators of Lahore Police have not been able to arrest a single suspect in the bizarre string of robberies as of yet. The robbers also injured a bank security guard when he resisted them during the heist. At around 11am, five robbers armed with sophisticated weapons arrived outside an Allied Bank branch located near Hamdard Chowk in a Toyota 2.0D Saloon with registration number LES 8668. Four were decked out in police uniforms while one of them was in plain clothes. The robber in plain clothes remained inside the car whereas others entered the bank acting like police officers, shouting at bank staff that they had received information about something fishy at the branch.
The robbers then approached the cash counter and forced the tellers at gunpoint to bag around Rs 4 million. The security guard tried to stop them as they were leaving, upon which they shot him in the leg and escaped while firing in the air. The guard was rushed to a local hospital once the robbers left the bank. After being informed of the incident, a heavy contingent of police reached the scene under the supervision of Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Operations Shaukat Abbas and SSP Investigations Abdul Razaq Cheema, Saddar Division SP Shoaib Khurram Janbaz, Iqbal Town SP Muntazir Mehdi and Crime Investigation Agency (CIA) SP Umer Virak.
Policemen cordoned off the area and the forensics team collected evidence from the crime scene such as fingerprints, CCTV footage and around 12 bullet casings. Police investigators also recorded statements of the customers and bank staff. Cheema told Pakistan Today that the modus operandi was quite similar to that of the robbers who robbed a bank in Faisal Town a few weeks ago. He said the robbers were aged between 30 to 40 years and seemed to be residents of central Punjab. He said this gang of robbers was different from the one that had earlier robbed other banks in the city.
Abbas told reporters at the crime scene that police had traced the robbers but were not able to arrest any of them yet. He said the robbery was not the police’s fault and claimed that policemen from Green Town Police Station had visited the bank earlier in the morning and checked security at and around the bank. He said the bank administration had hired only two security guards, which were not well-trained. An eyewitness named Shahid, a resident of Green Town, told Pakistan Today he was waiting for his turn to pay his electricity bill when he saw four policemen entering the bank. He said the policemen created a scene and pretended to be investigating suspicious activity at the branch, threatening more than 30 customers and bank staff.
“We were trying to figure out what was happening when one of the policemen pulled out some cash from the counter,” said Shahid. “We immediately realised they were not policemen.”
Robbers fired at least 12 shots in the bank, which caused the people in the building to panic, he added.
This was the 11th such incident in the city and police have failed to arrest a single suspect. A couple of weeks ago, Lahore Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Ahmed Raza Tahir held a press briefing at his office and claimed that police had traced the robbers and would bring them before the media in 10 days, but his claims proved to be a castle in the air.
Well-placed sources told Pakistan Today that a few of the robbers who were involved in the heists were arrested by Peshawar Police, who refused to hand them over to Lahore Police. Sources said the Peshawar CCPO was not even responding to the calls of Lahore Police.
Cheema, however, denied that Peshawar Police was not cooperating with them. He said moving criminals from one province to another province required a long procedure which could be considered the only hurdle.
