8 men break into Gomtinagar house, loot and scoot

LUCKNOW: Eight unidentified armed miscreants struck at the Gomtinagar residence of a consultant in the early hours of Tuesday. They held his family hostage, robbed cash and other valuables and managed to flee unchallenged.
SM Rizvi stays in a two-storey house in Viram Khand, Gomtinagar, with his wife Zeba and mother-in-law Zohra. His only son, Abbas, is an engineer based in the United States.
In his complaint, Rizvi said that at 2.58 am on Tuesday, “We were all sleeping.I was on the first floor while my wife Zeba and her mother Zohra were in the bedroom on the ground floor when masked miscreants, all wielding firearms or knives, barged into the house. Seven of them had come in and one stood outside, on guard. They all had their faces covered. They scaled the boundary wall and broke the window and grille of the drawing room to gain access to the bedroom. There, they held Zohra hostage by training a gun at her. They told the women not to move.”
He said the miscreants tied both the women up and beat them up after covering their eyes with cloth. “They held my wife Zeba at gun-point, forcing her to guide them to where cash and valuables were kept,” Rizvi told police.
Once they were done with the ground floor, Rizvi said, “they climbed the stairs and banged on the door of my room. I woke up, switched on the lights and screamed for help. Then they fled. I made a call to ‘Dial 100’ at 3.40 am after which police came within ten minutes. The whole action was caught on CCTV installed in the house, clips of which are with police. One person is recognisable, ” Rizvi said.
Soon after the call, dog squad and a forensic team reached the spot. ADG (Lucknow Range) Abhay Prasad, IG (Lucknow Range) Jai Narain Singh and SSP Deepak Kumar reached the spot to supervise investigations.
ASP (north) Anurag Vats said the dacoity seemed to be the handiwork of an organized gang that is active in the city and escapes to neighbouring districts after committing crime. Senior sub-inspector, Gomtinagar, Z Ahmed said a case under dacoity had been registered and a probe was unde rway. Jewellery worth Rs 4 lakh and Rs 40,000 in cash had been looted from the Rizvi household.
Three weeks ago, a similar dacoity took place at a property dealer’s house in Vivekhand of Gomtinagar.