2 soldiers, engineer arrested for Noida bank heist

NOIDA: Two army soldiers and a computer engineer, who robbed a bank in this Delhi suburb to buy weapons so that they could "eliminate the corrupt politicians" in India, have been arrested, a police official said on Wednesday.

R.K. Chaturvedi, senior superintendent of police, Noida, said that the trio had robbed the sector-12 branch of the State Bank of India. They had carried away Rs 1.08 million.

He said the three men robbed the bank to "buy weapons to eliminate corrupt politicians". He said two of them are serving soldiers and one is a computer engineer.

While checking vehicles at sector 24 Tuesday night, a police team asked the motorcycle-borne young men to stop. They, however, opened fire. The police fired back and then overpowered them.

During interrogation, they revealed their motive for the bank heist was to eliminate corrupt politicians from Indian politics and to remove social evils.

The arrested men are: Vijay Singh Chauhan, an army soldier posted at Amritsar in Punjab, Vivekanand Verma, an army soldier posted at Nasik in Maharashtra, and Raj Narayan, a computer engineer.

Raj Narayan had approached his cousin Vijay Singh Chauhan, who in turn contacted Vivekanand Verma. Singh and Verma were on leave.

The police recovered Rs.900,000, 2 pistols, a motorcycle, 20 live cartridges and a mobile phone from them.