“Let the robbers take what they have come for, never engage.”
The 36-year-old Harvinder Singh Dhiman was told this by his friends in the community after his Hotspot Electronics shop on Norman Spencer Drive, Papatoetoe, was ravaged by four masked men with golf rods and big bags in an attempted robbery on May 17, 2025, at 6:03 p.m. – a robbery second time in two months.
The shutters were down, and Dhiman was wrapping up to leave after his wife, before the robbers entered through a side opening of the shop yesterday.
“My wife and kids had left the store three minutes before. I suspect that the robbers waited for the only car (that had my wife and kids) to leave the premises before they entered and attempted to steal,” Dhiman told The Indian Weekender.
Suffering a loss of two high-end phones and damage to the smashed counters, Dhiman says he is still in fear thinking about it.
However, this is not the first attempted robbery in his store since it was opened nine months ago.
In March 2025, Dhiman shares that a woman walked into the same store with the intention of buying a phone, snatched it from him, and ran away in the car – as shown in the CCTV footage below.
“The stolen phone was then put up on sale on Facebook, and I alerted the police, but they said there was not enough evidence, so I let it go as well,” he recalls.
CCTV footage of the second robbery on May 17 shows quick-thinking action by Dhiman as he first shouted to scare the masked men away, then pulled a chair from behind the counter and pointed it towards them.
“It is my hard-earned money, why should I let it go?” he told The Indian Weekender.
Dhiman explains that he attempted to scare them away and save as many items in his shop as he could.
“We were successful, until they attempted to barge in again from the main door as my coworker and I blocked it,” he shared.
Dhiman immediately alerted the police after the incident.
“I asked, are you sending someone? They said it could be a while.”
A police official then phoned Dhiman a few minutes later and said they were sending personnel to take stock of the situation.
Photos and his statement were recorded, and the matter is under investigation.
“What makes the case difficult is that the number plates of the robbers are not visible in the CCTV,” Dhiman attributes this to the flashing light on the car number plate that makes the number unrecognisable.
“The police said that will not be an issue and they will be able to identify the plate from other sources,” Dhiman explained.
He estimates that his shop items are worth thousands of dollars.
“I’m considering bringing down the shutters early or shutting the shop on Sundays – the busiest day of the week for business – altogether,” he said.
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