Rs 6 lakh looted from Madhepura petrol pump

PATNA: A gang of armed robbers looted Rs 6.4 lakh from a petrol pump located on a busy road in Madhepura around 2am on Thursday. The incident comes two days after Rs 6 lakh was looted from a fuel pump near Hajipur in Vaishali district.
Police said five masked men descended on the petrol pump on the Madhepura-Saharsa main road, which is a busy highway even at night.They held the manager and other employees captive at gunpoint and left with Rs 6.4 lakh from the cash box. The robbers even assaulted one of the employees, Dinesh Yadav, when the latter resisted.
The owner of the outlet, Poonam Singh, told the police that the robbers were in the age group of 20 and 25 years and had their faces covered. They entered the premises after scaling a fencing wall while the employees were asleep.
“The robbers fired in the air when local residents gave them a chase. But they managed to escape. A complaint has been lodged by the manager Birendra Kumar,” Madhepura DSP Washi Ahmad said.
“Video clips from the CCTV installed at the fuel outlet have been obtained and efforts were on to ascertain the identity of the criminals involved in the crime,” Ahmad said over phone.
The armed robbers struck at the petrol pump in Madhepura two days after a similar incident was reported from Hajipur in Vaishali district. Armed gunmen had looted Rs 6 lakh from a petrol pump under the Industrial police station.
A day earlier, the owner of a petrol pump was shot at and critically injured when he was going to deposit cash at a nationalized bank in Chhapra. “It seems petrol pumps have become a soft target for robbers in the state in recent times,” said a senior police officer posted at police headquarters.