20 booked for Rs30m copper heist at Wapda workshop.

BAHAWALPUR -- Police have registered a robbery case against 15-20 unidentified robbers who on Sunday took away copper worth Rs30 million from the Water and Power Development Agency's transformers repair workshop near the main city grid station, Goth Ghani, after taking the in charge and a security guard hostage.

Executive Engineer Khawaja Niaz Ahmed told Dawn on Monday that 15 to 20 armed men barged into the Wapda workshop on two private trucks on a closed holiday on Sunday.

They took the security guard hostage at gunpoint, tied him with a rope and locked him up in a room.

The intruders also cut off cables of some 14 close circuit TV cameras installed on the workshop premises.

The robbers then loaded 30 tonnes of copper worth Rs30million dumped there for auction onto the trucks.

Meanwhile, workshop in-charge SDO Sabir Hussain who arrived there, on being informed of dysfunctional CCTV cameras by the monitoring officer at Multan, was also taken hostage by the robbers.

The robbers then fled away with the copper-laden trucks.

He said the CCTV footage of the fleeing robbers and the trucks had been obtained from different places, including the Bahawalpur toll plaza.

Multan Electric Power Company (Mepco) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Tahir Mehmood also visited the workshop and inquired about the incident.

Saddar police said an FIR (No.313/20) under section 382 of the Pakistan...