SHEIKHUPURA, Dec 23: Five dacoits barged into a rice mills at Mandi Faizabad on Thursday, some 46km away from here and took away cash worth Rs400,000 at gunpoint.

Reports said the robbers held hostage four employees of the mills, Ghulam Mustafa, Waqar, Nadeem and Naeem and beat them up.

The bandits found safe keys lying in a box. They opened the locker and made off with cash. Meanwhile, DIG Pervaiz Rahim Rajpoot while chairing a meeting of police officials ordered them to restrain from illegal confinements. He asked the officials to improve patrolling on main routes of the district to control the growing incidence of robberies.

He directed all the SDPOs and SHOs to finalize investigation reports at the earliest and send them to respective courts. On this occasion, DPO Shahid Iqbal, SP Umer Farooq Bhatti, SP (investigation) Rana Suleman Sultan and various ASPs were also present.

THREE KILLED: Three friends were killed when their motorcycle was hit by a speeding wagon on Lahore Road, some 25 kilometre from here on Thursday. Amjad and his two friends were on way by their motorcycle when the wagon coming from Lahore hit their bike. Consequently, all the three friends died on the spot. The wagon driver managed to escape from the scene. Factory Area police are going into the matter.