Three in police net for Rs45 lakh Vasai robbery

The Valiv police have on Tuesday arrested three suspected robbers in the Vasai phata robbery case. However, they are yet to recover the stolen cash. The arrested persons have been identified as Suresh Shetty, Raghu Shetty and Eknath Patil.

"We have arrested three persons under section 394 (robbery) of the Indian Penal Code on the basis that they were the persons who knew that Mantri had cash in the car and they had pre-planned the robbery. While Suresh Shetty is the manager of the bar, Raghunath Shetty and Eknath Patil are waiters. We are yet to recover the cash and are investigating the matter further," said Narayan Patil, police inspector, Valiv police station.

Surat businessman Abhishek Mantri, 22, was robbed of over Rs45 lakh near Vasai on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad Highway around 2am on Monday.

Meanwhile, a day after he lost more than Rs45 lakh, Mantri regrets visiting the bar. Mantri took a flight from Hyderabad and landed at Mumbai on Sunday night from where he headed for Surat with a friend by road. On the way, he splurged at an orchestra bar at Dahisar. Apparently, in a drunken state, he told the bar staffers that there was a lot of cash in his car.

Reaching Vasai phata after leaving the bar, the friends stopped to answer nature's call. Four masked men, who came in a car, attacked them with iron rods and fled with the cash kept in the dickey of Mantri's car. The robbery was over in about two minutes.

While speaking to dna, Abhishek Mantri said, "I regret visiting the bar and learnt a lesson from the incident. I would be very much cautious while partying. I hope the police would help recover the cash."