An 82-year-old woman was held hostage at gunpoint in her first-floor flat and robbed of gold jewellery worth ₹40 lakh besides ₹35,000 cash in the Sector 27 market of Chandigarh early on Tuesday.

Police said four masked men barged into SCF (shop-cum-flat) number 1, where Raksha Sharma lives alone, at 3.10am and robbed her at gunpoint. It took the robbers half-an-hour to ransack the house and flee with the jewellery and the cash after restraining the elderly woman, who later reported the incident to the police.

Police sources said the woman’s husband passed away due to age-related ailments last year. Their only son is based abroad. The couple owned the hardware shop on the ground floor and stayed on the first floor.

They said the intruders gained entry by climbing the grill of a transformer adjoining the house. Once inside, they locked the gate and entered the house to avoid any escape and suspicion.

The robbers tied the woman’s hands and one of them held a gun to her head, while the rest ransacked the house for valuables.

The woman said the robbers were speaking in Haryanvi accent. “They seemed to know exactly where to find the valuables,” she told the police, indicating the involvement of someone who knew about the house.

A team of the Chandigarh Police and the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) gathered evidence, including sharp-edged weapons left behind by the robbers.