Two robbers plunge to death to escape mob justice

In order to escape public ire, two panicked housebreakers jumped off a Goregaon building they had invaded to steal, and died on the spot. The incident took place in the early hours of Tuesday.

The robbers, identified as Raghumal Bhagat alias Raghu (20) and Mohammed Razaq Khan (23) were trying to break into a flat in the Asmi Complex on the Ram Mandir road in Goregaon. Residents of the complex followed the duo after a man from the neighbouring wing raised an alarm gathering other residents.

The two men who broke into one of the flats in Asmi complex's R2 wing, jumped off to avoid arrest; the spot where they were found dead

According to witness Pradeep Potdar who lives on the fifth floor of R3 wing, he woke up at 4 am on Tuesday and spotted the duo when he looked out of his window. He saw the two trying to sneak into the neighbouring R2 wing. Potdar suspected that something was wrong and immediately called up the security guard asking him to stop the duo.

Aman Yadav, the guard, saw the two and followed them inside the wing. "I suspected that the two could be intruders when I saw them entering the building surreptitiously," said Potdar. By the time Yadav realised what was going on, the duo had already reached the seventh storey and managed to unlock all the four flats on that floor.

Officials from Goregaon police station said the two had also opened the sliding door of a flat and tried to flick a cellphone kept on a refrigerator. Meanwhile, Potdar had managed to call up a few society members who gathered below the building. By this time, the miscreants were standing on the ledge of a window, panicking at the commotion.

Yadav asked them to step in but Raghu jumped off the building, fearing arrest and residents' anger. He landed on a motorcycle parked below and broke his skull. Khan, who followed his lead, landed on the ground, dying on impact. The society members informed the police, who sent the bodies for post-mortem.

"Khan and Raghu were residents of Bhagat Singh Nagar in Goregaon and were petty thieves. We called Raghu's brother who told us that Raghu and Khan were addicts and used to break into homes to rob small items in order to buy drugs," said Arun Jadhav, senior inspector of Goregaon police station. Their families had disowned them, he added.u00a0