HYDERABAD: Four persons robbed a businessman's relative of Rs. 8 lakhs after attacking him with knives around 7 a.m. on Tuesday on Gaganmahal Road in Domalguda.

Gopal Das, 30, arrived at the Secunderabad railway station from

Dire threat

Rajahmundry after collecting arrears from retailers and came to his brother-in-law Lalit Kumar Guptha's house in an auto-rickshaw.

While two miscreants lay in wait near Mr. Guptha's apartment's gate on a motorcycle, the others kept vigil on the other side of road on a scooter.

"As I stopped my autorickshaw, the two persons near the gate walked up to me. I thought they were Das' family members," Srinivas, the driver, told the police.

The duo then lunged at Srinivas, started beating him up and warned him to leave the place or get killed.

Thrashed again

The driver then ran for his life. A panicky Das too jumped out of the vehicle.

Meanwhile, the other two miscreants charged at him and inflicted a knife injury on his left hand, asking him to part with the suitcase. They picked up the suitcase and fled the scene.

"Those riding the scooter returned when they saw Das noting down its number and thrashed him again," Chikkadpally Inspector V.N.V. Satyanarayana said. Surprisingly, none of the passers-by dared to raise an alarm.

"Das shouted for help. Even I too yelled for assistance but in vain," the driver recalled.

A resident of Kishanbagh, Das was working with his relative Guptha, a wholesale cloth merchant having a shop at Rikabgunj.

The miscreants spoke in Urdu and were all in their mid-20s. Das left Hyderabad for Vizianagaram on December 31 and had arrived in the city on Monday morning after collecting money from retailers.

Preparation of portraits

"The fact that robbers lay in wait at Guptha's house and knew when Das was arriving suggests that they were familiar with his movements," the Inspector said.

Efforts were on to prepare portraits of the accused persons based on the description given by him.

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