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Luxury car racket: Kharar SDM’s clerk lands in police net
Handesra police are pursuing a thorough probe into the potential involvement of other government officials, besides banks and insurance companies, for causing loss to government exchequer
Digging deeper into the multi-crore nexus of a gang forging registration certificates and numbers of luxury cars to sell them off to unwary buyers, Mohali police have arrested a clerk deployed at the Kharar SDM office for alleged connivance with the fraudsters.
Sarabjit Singh is the fifth accused to be arrested in the case, said police.
Having traced over 250 such cars in the past four months, majority of them sporting fake numbers from Kharar (PB-27), Handesra police are pursuing a thorough probe into the potential involvement of other government officials, besides banks and insurance companies, for causing loss to government exchequer.
“Details of the NOCs required to issue RCs or other important documents required for the same could only be uploaded from either the clerk’s ID after the SDM’s approval or using the ID of the SDM concerned. The fake details of the luxury cars were uploaded from the ID used by Sarabjit and we also matched the IP address. He was finally nabbed,” said an investigator.
Another cop said after the racket was busted, Sarabjit in December alerted the local police about their official ID for vehicle registration being hacked and sought registration of an FIR in this regard.
“It was all to save their skin. There is a possibility of more employees or senior administrative officials being hand in glove with the clerk. The investigation is on,” an officer said.
Previously, busting the racket, police had arrested four persons, the first being Kamaljit Verma, 35, of Kharar, who had tried to sell off a Hyundai Venue car with a fake number in Handesra, only to be nabbed by the local police. The car was brought from Haridwar, Uttarakhand, and its number switched out for a fake one, said police.
Further probe led to the arrest of Ronie Mitra, 30, a native of West Bengal and currently residing in Kharar, who helped Kamaljit forge his Aadhaar card for the car’s resale. The third accused is Sandeep, alias Sunny, 25, who had access to the official emails and online portal of the Kharar vehicle registration department, while the fourth, Rakesh Mittal, 57, of Patiala, was earlier booked by the Uttar Pradesh police for buying stolen vehicles.
Mittal who allegedly bought stolen vehicles, both four-wheelers and two-wheelers, from local gangs in Meerut sold them further in Punjab using fake RCs and chassis numbers, said police.
“In-depth inquiry brought forth fraudulent registration of vehicles at Kharar. They would forge registrations of high-end luxury vehicles by fabricating the vehicle chassis number and upload the fake registration number on the central Parivahan portal,” said an investigator.
After roping in employees of the Kharar vehicle registration department for fake registrations, the gang would even blackmail and threaten them for more quick money, the official added.
The probe so far has revealed that the vehicles equipped with fake numbers were those declared as total loss, involved in bank loan defaults, reported stolen or banned due to BSIV engines. Going further, the gang would unscrupulously even buy a luxury in a different state and declare it stolen, pocketing both the insurance money and the amount obtained from its resale.
Police have so far recovered seven luxury cars from the gang.
