5 men held for killing two maids at a house in southeast Delhi

PTI, 18th November, 2021, New Delhi: Five men were arrested for allegedly stealing around Rs 90 lakh cash after killing two female maids at a house in southeast Delhi"s Jangpura Extension, police said on Wednesday. 

The two women -- Meena Rai (35) and 40 (Sujaila Gurung) -- hailed from Darjeeling in West Bengal and had been living in the staff quarters of the house since they started working there as maids in June, they said. 

The main conspirator behind the robbery-cum-murder was identified as Sachit Saxena, a resident of Uttar Pradesh"s Bareilly. He is a nephew of the former house help who worked in the house two years ago, police said. 

According to police, the accused along with his associates -- Prashant Basista, Aniket Jha, Ramesh and Dhananjay Gulia -- hatched a conspiracy to rob the place based on inside information of a presence of large amount of cash in the house and later executed their plan on the intervening night of Sunday and Monday. 

They had already decided to eliminate any resistance from the house occupants if it occurred during the crime, police said. 

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Southeast) Esha Pandey said the accused disclosed during questioning that they had conducted several recce over the last one month and arranged chloroform, tape, cutter, punch, rope, masks, and other necessary items for carrying their plan. 

To conceal their identity, they used VoIP instead of normal phone calls and did not carry their mobile phones at the time of the incident. As per the plan, they had designated their name as numeric 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, police said. 

Narrating the sequence of incident, the accused revealed that on the day of the crime, all of them assembled outside the place around 10 pm. They waited for three-and-a-half hours inside the park, the officer said. Around 1.30 am, four of them entered the house from the back door after scaling the front wall. 

"While they entered the room, Mina Rai woke up and all the accused overpowered her, pinned her mouth with chloroform, tied her hands and legs with the help of a rope and taped her mouth with silver tape. While they were committing the robbery in the drawing room, the other maid woke up. As she tried to scream, she was also overpowered and then smothered with a pillow," Pandey said. 

After the incident, all of them escaped along with the cash worth approximately Rs 90 lakh (including foreign currency) in two bags, police said. Police received a PCR call at 9.45 am on Monday regarding two maids lying unconscious in a house at Jangpura Extension. The suspects were identified with the help of CCTV footage in which all the accused were seen at the place. 

The route of the suspect was chalked out through close examination of multiple CCTV footage and in another CCTV video, they were found riding a motorcycle after the incident, the senior police officer said. 

The owner of the bike -- accused Sachit Saxena -- was later apprehended using technical analysis and based on his disclosure, his four accomplices were also arrested from one of their hideouts while they were planning to flee separately to various parts of India after distributing the stolen money among themselves. 

Police said articles used in the offence along with seven mobile phones of the accused, their clothes and bags have been recovered. PTI AMP HDA