Around 11 a.m., Ludhiana-based businessman S.K. Bansal drove up to the Baroda Bank Branch in Bharat Nagar, New Friends Colony, in his black Maruti Esteem. Bansal had come on a business trip and was carrying Rs 90,000 in a briefcase.

Once inside the bank compound, he told his driver to park the vehicle in ``a safe place''. Bansal told the police: ``I had to pick up some papers. Since it would take me a couple of minutes, I left the briefcase with the money in the car.''

When he returned the car was missing. But he didn't know then that, as soon as he had entered the bank, two armed youths had walked up to his Maruti Esteem and forced open the doors.

Or that one of the youths had pointed a gun at driver Brijender Singh, while the other threatened him with a knife. The youths had snatched the car keys, pushed Brijender into a corner of the rear seat. While the youth with the gun ensured that his weapon was always pointed at Brijender, his accomplice, later identified as Mohammed Yusuf, 25, sat at the wheel. Yusuf drove at breakneck speed, heading towards the UP border, via Okhla and Kalindi Kunj. But when he neared a police post in the Okhla area where traffic was thick, he rammed a cycle-rickshaw, lost control and hit a car. Then he attempted to reverse the vehicle, but hit two more cars and a group of cyclists.

He would have still got away, but for constable Azad Singh, and mechanic Aslam. As the constable and the mechanic ran towards the Esteem, the youths jumped out and started running. But Azad Singh and Aslam caught up with one of them, Mohammed Yusuf. The other escaped in the confusion. Driver Brijender stepped out of the car only when the drama ended and more policemen reached the spot. The youths had failed to take the briefcase.