New Delhi: Returning home from his job at a high-end car showroom in Delhi’s Chanakyapuri, Anil Tiwari was stopped near the Hungarian Embassy just around sunset on 20 June.
What followed was a staged Enforcement Directorate raid, a Rs 30-lakh heist, and a plot straight out of the Bollywood film Special 26—with a twist. Tiwari was shoved into a car by the two men who allegedly assaulted him and told he was being taken into custody as part of a probe by the Enforcement Directorate.
They also presented a fake letter from the agency informing him about their planned search of the showroom, citing the presence of large sums of cash there.
“Mr. Tiwari was then forcibly taken back to the showroom. Once inside, they retrieved the car keys from Mr. Tiwari’s bag, opened the Bentley’s boot, and took all Rs 30 lakhs,” New Delhi Deputy Commissioner of Police, Devesh Kumar Mahla said.
The money had been received from a customer just the previous day. Tiwari was later dropped at a national highway far away from his workplace.
The Delhi Police said the raid resembling the Bollywood movie Special 26 was “fake”. It arrested three individuals, including an employee of the showroom, for allegedly passing on the information about the cash and hatching a conspiracy.
The accused persons have been identified as Sunil Kumar Taneja (46), and Suraj (22)—who allegedly abducted Tiwari and took away money from the showroom—while the third accused has been identified as Sumit Yadav (25).
DCP Mahla said that out of a total of Rs 30 lakh stolen from the showroom, investigators have recovered Rs 15 lakh from Taneja. Also, Rs 8 lakh, which was invested in a fixed deposit by him, has been frozen.
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Special 26 with a twist
While all the elements till the stealing of Rs 30 lakh from the showroom resembled the script of the Bollywood movie Special 26, there was a marked difference in how this story played out.
After being dropped at the national highway, Tiwari immediately informed his employer about the overall sequence of events. His owner waited for the Enforcement Directorate or any agency to make further communication to him about the purported crime.
However, as the realisation dawned upon him about the search being a fraud on them, Tiwari approached the Chankyapuri Police Station early Wednesday. The Delhi Police booked unknown suspects under 319(2) (cheating by personation), 318(4) (cheating). 140(3) (kidnapping or abduction) 309(4) (robbery) and 3(5) (furtherance of the common intention) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).
A team of police personnel led by Assistant Commissioner of Police Arti Sharma started scanning footage of CCTV cameras installed around the area and spotted a Wagon-R having a “partially obscured” license plate. The investigators suspected it to be the car used in the offence and zeroed in on its owner, who turned out to be Taneja.
The address in the registered documents took investigators to the Dabri area in West Delhi, but the Taneja had already moved out and shifted to Gurugram in Haryana after the death of his wife.
Once Taneja was arrested Saturday, he spilled the beans on the entire plan.
Taneja allegedly revealed that his old friend Sumit Yadav, with whom he had worked for three years in the past, was the mastermind of the plan. Struggling to deal with a huge debt, Yadav tipped Taneja about a cash transaction of Rs 30 lakh 19 June, which was stored in a Bentley car in the showroom itself, leading to the theft of money.
“A sustained interrogation of the accused led to uncovering of the conspiracy. Sumit Yadav, working as sales executive at the showroom, had provided crucial information to the main accused, Sunil Kumar Taneja. It was revealed that Taneja and Yadav had previously worked together at Spinny, an online car sales company, where they hatched a plan to steal money from the showroom,” DCP Mahla said in a statement Tuesday.
“Sunil Kumar Taneja, a driver by profession, knew Suraj through their previous shared employment at a property dealer’s office in Najafgarh, where they had worked together for 2-3 years,” he further said.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
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