Lucknow: 4 held for highway robbery to pay off ‘buffalo loan’

LUCKNOW: More than the crime, the reason buffaloed the policemen. Four fledgling milkmen, barely out of their teens, planned a highway robbery-cum-carjacking and executed it in all their naïveté. Policemen spotted them on CCTV footage and tracked them down quickly. When caught, the accused were quick to blame it all on their buffaloes!
According to their statement to the police, Nijaj of Kakori, Abrar Ahmad, Aneesh Ali and Muin Ali, all of Para police station area and in their early 20s, were desperate to pay off a loan of Rs 8.5 lakh they had taken to buy seven buffaloes in Talkatora.
The young milk vendors planned a highway robbery as a quick fix to their problem.
ACP, Bazaarkhala, Anil Kumar Yadav, said that Aneesh was given the task to spot a seemingly affluent man and loot his car and other belongings.
“On the fateful day, Aneesh informed them about a man in a car who stopped at a beer shop in the area. Other miscreants reached the scene on their motorcycles. They waited for the man to sit inside the car. As the victim was in an inebriated state, all the miscreants surrounded him as soon as he sat inside the car. They overpowered him and one of them drove the car towards Bhalia village,” said Yadav.
When they reached an isolated place, they looted the gold ornaments and Rs 8,000 cash from the victim before dumping him in the thickets. They drove on, but the car developed some snag in the clutch plate, following which they had to park the car at the house of a gram pradhan in Shivri village, the police said.
“Nijaj, who is the mastermind of the crime, said he gave Rs 4,000 each to Anees and Muin while keeping the gold ornaments with him. He said they threw the mobile phone and documents of the car in a canal on the way,” the officer added.
Luckily, they did not harm the victim and dumped him in the thickets.
They were later spotted in multiple CCTV footage, tracked down quickly and arrested.