62-year-old foils robbery attempt

The courageous act of a 62-year-old cashier of a factory, Manohar Lal, helped Delhi police solve a robbery case in Keshav Puram. Delhi police commissioner has announced a reward of Rs 10,000 to Lal for the courageous act.

'The thief, identified as Virender Pratap Singh, a post graduate in political science, barged along with an associate into a Lawrence Road-based factory that supplies packaged drinking water and soft drinks on Monday. Manohar Lal, the cashier of the factory, nabbed the thief and foiled robbery,' said Meenu Chaudhary, DCP (north-west).

Lal was in his office at the second floor when the two young men barged into his office, on the pretext of depositing cash. One of them was carrying a bag with him. The men were accompanied by Vinod Bora, who guards the premises. Once Bora left the office, one of the thieves took a pistol out of the bag and pointed it towards Lal and demanded him to hand over the cash in his possession. 'Lal got hold of the barrel of the pistol and refused to hand over the cash. But the thieves managed to overpower Lal and took away the bag containing cash worth Rs 22,000 and documents from Lal's room,' said Chaudhary.

But when the thieves tried to escape, Lal started to shout for help. Alerted by this, Bora and Rahul, owner of the factory, waylaid the thieves. 

They managed to grab one of them, who was later identified as Singh.

The police was informed of the incident. Two country made pistols and two live cartridges were recovered from the accused. Efforts are on to arrest absconding associate, identified as Rajesh Kumar Malhaa, said a police officer.