Cops look to CCTV footage, but in vain

The Airport police had collected the footage of a CCTV camera installed at a bank in Kharadi to solve a robbery. However, their efforts failed as the CCTV camera had become non-functional at the time of the robbery due to a power outage.
In the robbery case, a sports utility vehicle (SUV) driver from Shirur was abducted at Kharadi and looted of his vehicle, mobile and some petty cash by a gang of three early on Monday. The police are now depending on the descriptions given by the victim to trace the robbers.
However, the driver, Santosh Raskar (27) from Nimgoan Bhogi village in Shirur taluka, has not been of much help in preparing sketches of the robbers.
The police have expanded their manhunt to the outskirts of Pune as the stolen SUV was found abandoned at Aale Phata on Nashik Road. They said they will seek the help of the Pune rural police if the need arises.
Raskar had driven his uncle’s SUV to Pune to drop some people at Lohegaon on Sunday night. He went to sleep in the vehicle after parking it on the Pune-Ahmednagar highway at Kharadi.
He said that early on Monday, the robbers asked him to take them to Ahmednagar. They overpowered him, took him to a secluded spot in the nearby area where he was beaten up. They then decamped with the petty cash he carried, his mobile and the SUV.
Sub-inspector Anant Sahane, who is investigating the case, said, “On Thursday midnight we found the SUV abandoned at an isolated spot near Ale Phata. We obtained the footage grabbed by the CCTV camera installed at a bank where the car was parked. The incident was not recorded as the camera had blacked out at the time of the robbery.”