NOIDA:“I folded my hands and pleaded with them to let me and my daughter go,” 27-year-old Anu Dhanda told TOI, recollecting the “most horrific episode” of her life that lasted for five very long minutes.
Anu’s husband Nishant Dhanda (29), a civil engineer, had parked their Brezza near the Migsun cut in Greater Noida’s Omicron 3 and just stepped out to buy some vegetables for the house. It wasn’t that late on a Sunday evening — only 7.30pm — but traffic had already thinned on the stretch.
Seated in the backseat, Anu was playing with her daughter when two men barged into the car. While one took the driver’s seat, the other pushed Anu to the side and sat beside her. He whipped out a gun, pointed it at Anu’s head and threatened to shoot the mother and daughter dead if she raised an alarm. Anu tried to move out of the car, and had even put her foot on the ground when the accused seated in front stepped on the accelerator. Since the vegetable vendor was just a few metres away, Nishant had left the keys in the car itself. “I had just stepped out of my car. My wife and daughter were in the backseat. Two men barged into the vehicle, pointed a gun at my wife and fled with the vehicle,” Nishant said.
For Anu, those were the most horrific moments of her life. The mother and daughter were held hostage for a few minutes and dumped 300 metres away. “I shouted out to my husband and tried to step out of the car, but the man on the driver’s seat sped away. One of the accused pointed a gun at me. He placed it on my head and threatened to kill both me and my daughter. I pleaded with them to let us go. With folded hands, I told them to drop us,” Anu recollected.
The man in front told the other “Ise faink do (dump them)”. Around 300 metres away, the Brezza stopped on the road towards Omaxe Palm Greens society. Anu and her infant daughter were pushed out of the vehicle and the accused fled with it.
Seeing a police vehicle coming towards them, the accused entered one of the gates of Omicron 3 sector and exited through the other. They could not be traced after that.
Police said they were scanning CCTV footage of the area and the Brezza could be seen in at least two clips near the gate of Omicron 3.
DCP (central Noida) Harish Chander said they were verifying some clues. “We are yet to get clear footage of the car. But some raw clues are being verified,” he added. Four policemen — a local chowki in-charge and three constables — were sent to the police lines for dereliction of duty. A departmental inquiry has been initiated against them.
Carjackings on the city’s roads had become a cause for concern for police and residents travelling alone at night. In January last year, a private firm executive, Gaurav Chandel, was found murdered on an unlit stretch near Parthala Chowk. It was later found that Chandel had been killed by carjackers. A few months later in September, Amity student Akshay Kalra was also killed in a carjacking attempt.