A youth living next door saved an elderly woman from three robbers who entered her APC Road apartment on Monday morning and tried to take away cash at gunpoint.

Rashida Begum was injured when one of the robbers struck her with a revolver butt, but it could have been worse had her neighbour Mohammad Ashique not come to her rescue.

Ashique heard her muffled cries and repeatedly banged on the main door when nobody answered the doorbell. The robbers panicked and tried to make a quick getaway, but he pounced on one of them and called for help. This alerted the guard and other residents of the building, who came running and helped Ashique catch two of the robbers, Rafique Ahmed and Raju Goria.

The one who escaped, Sheikh Rafique, is said to be the mastermind and a worker at the gum-manufacturing unit owned by Rashida Begum’s sons in Rajabazar.

The robbers had gone to the apartment a little after the woman’s three sons left for their office in the morning. “It was around 10.30am when the doorbell rang and I opened the door to find three men in their mid-20s standing. “They suddenly pushed me and entered the apartment. One of them took out a revolver and held it to my temple. When I started screaming, he hit me on the forehead. I was bleeding and groaning in pain,” she said.

Ashique came to know that Rashida Begum was in trouble just when the trio were cleaning up the wardrobe in which cash was kept.

“In their hurry to escape, the robbers came out of the apartment with only a part of the cash (Rs 32,300). The rest of the money was found lying on the floor,” said Jawed Shamim, the deputy commissioner of police (detective department).

He said Sheikh Rafique most likely knew that his employers had kept Rs 3 lakh at home. “Had Ashique not pressed the doorbell repeatedly, he and his accomplices would have made off with the entire amount.”