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Well-oiled racket of selling luxury cars with fake numbers busted in Mohali
Officials from Kharar SDM office, banks and insurance firms under radar of police; four cars recovered with arrest of four members; over 100 cars with fake numbers identified
A Kharar man’s attempt to sell a car with a forged number plate in Handesra, Dera Bassi, in December, has unravelled a well-oiled, multi-crore nexus of an inter-state gang involved in counterfeiting registration numbers and certificates of luxury cars to sell them off to unwary buyers.
Having traced over 100 such cars in the past one month, majority of them sporting fake numbers from Kharar (PB27), Handesra police are pursuing a thorough probe into the potential involvement of employees at the Kharar SDM office, banks and insurance companies for causing significant loss to the government exchequer.
“In-depth inquiry brought to fore 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 certificate (RC) on the central Parivahan portal,” said SP Darpan Kaur Ahluwalia.
After roping in employees of the Kharar registration authority for fake RCs, the gang would even blackmail them and threaten them for money, said investigators.
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 BS-IV engines. Going further, the gang would unscrupulously even buy luxury cars in a different state and declare them stolen, pocketing both the insurance money and the amount obtained from their resale.
Four persons involved in the nexus have landed in police net so far, the first being Kamaljit Verma, 35, of Kharar, who had tried to sell off a Hyundai Venue car with a fake RC in Handesra in December, 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 fake registration with a local address proof.
The third accused is Sandeep, alias Sunny, 25, who had access to the Kharar vehicle registration department’s computer systems, while the fourth, Rakesh Mittal, 57, of Patiala, is the one who blackmailed the department’s employees for money after the fake registration job was done.
Search is underway for two more gang members, who live in Kharar and Delhi.
Handesra police had initially booked the accused under Sections 420, 465, 467, 468, 471 and 120-B of the Indian Penal Code, but eventually also slapped extortion charges under Section 384 against Mittal.
Senior superintendent of police (SSP) Sandeep Garg said, “We are not going to spare anyone, even government officers, if found involved in the scam.”
Investigation so far has led to the recovery of a two Toyota Fortuner cars, an Audi and a Hyundai Venue from the accused.
Investigators said the gang would bring luxury cars to Punjab from various parts of the country, including Uttarakhand, Maharashtra and Delhi, and got their fake registration certificates uploaded on government’s Parivahan portal with the help of employees of the local registration authority.
“If a vehicle bought outside Punjab needs to be registered here, an NOC is required from the state of purchase, apart from an Aadhaar card with local address proof. But the fake RCs, with fake address proofs, were uploaded in the government portal from Kharar without NOC of the original state, report of the motor vehicle inspector, police NOC and even bank loan clearance NOC,” a police officer said.
While investigation into the racket was underway, the Kharar authorities concerned last month alerted the local police about their “official ID for vehicle registration being hacked”.
As part of their probe, Handesra police earlier this week collected records of suspected cars from the Kharar SDM office.
“I have been recently posted here in Kharar and thus I am not aware of the racket. We received a letter from the police a few days back and all details were provided to them,” said Gurmandar Singh, SDM, Kharar.
In 2019, a similar nexus was exposed by the Delhi Crime branch in Morinda. A senior administrative officer, who was posted in Morinda back then, coincidentally, was also posted in Kharar when the scam was uncovered here, but has since been transferred.
Tried to strike a deal with a middle-east diplomat
SP Ahluwalia said probe revealed that the gang also tried to strike an unsolicited deal with a Mumbai-based ambassador of a middle-east country who was looking to sell his BS-IV Porsche car.
Forging the car’s registration documents at their end, they approached the diplomat to help him sell the car in exchange for a commission, but were turned down.
