Cops track car for 9 days to bust vehicle theft gang

The accused would buy cars involved in accidents put on sale by insurance companies in auctions and would sell them in scrap, said a police officer, adding that they would later find an identical model through car selling portals and would steal them from their locations and engrave the engine and chassis number of the scrapped cars and use its valid papers to further re-sell it.

Navi Mumbai: The Navi Mumbai crime branch monitored one white WagonR car for nine days through CCTV footage and zeroed in on a gang which was allegedly stealing cars and changing their chassis numbers as well as replacing their engines with scrapped vehicles. Four people have been arrested in the matter. According to the police, with this arrest, they have unearthed as many as 15 vehicle theft cases in the area.

“A special team was formed to investigate rising vehicle theft cases in Navi Mumbai and during investigations, the team found CCTV footage which showed the accused using a white WagonR car in vehicle thefts,” said the police officer. “The cops followed that car and in one of the footage, they got the registration number and found the mobile number linked to it.” (Bachchan Kumar/ HT PHOTO)

The accused have been identified as Mohammed Arshad Amjad Ali Khan, 27, Akhtar Amjad Ali Khan, 25, Zahid Akhtar Ansari, 30 and Abdul Maji Musabhai, 42.

The accused would buy cars involved in accidents put on sale by insurance companies in auctions and would sell them in scrap, said a police officer, adding that they would later find an identical model through car selling portals and would steal them from their locations and engrave the engine and chassis number of the scrapped cars and use its valid papers to further re-sell it.

“Till now, we have been able to find the involvement of the gang in 15 vehicle theft cases and we suspect that there could be more such cases. Further investigations are on,” said additional commissioner of police (crime branch) Deepak Sakore.

“A special team was formed to investigate rising vehicle theft cases in Navi Mumbai and during investigations, the team found CCTV footage which showed the accused using a white WagonR car in vehicle thefts,” said the police officer. “The cops followed that car and in one of the footage, they got the registration number and found the mobile number linked to it.”

The officer added that the mobile number was unreachable and hence the cops traced the insurance policy papers of the car and nabbed Arshad from Kharghar, which led to the arrest of the other three accused.

“Two more associates of Arshad are wanted,” senior police inspector Sunil Shinde from Unit I, crime branch, said. “Ansari would do the bidding and purchase accident cars, while his brother Akhtar would make the online payments for the transactions. Once the cars were purchased, they would then look for identical models of cars on online portals with similar colours and years of manufacture and get the registration number details from the photos posted. Using the registration number, the accused would then check the details online and get the address of the owner.”

“The group would then visit the address and steal the car. The purchased cars and stolen cars were then given to scrap dealer Musabhai, who would then destroy the purchased car and engrave its chassis and engine number onto the similar-looking stolen vehicle. The group would resell the stolen car with the papers of the scrapped vehicle,” he added.

Of the 15 cases, two were from Mumbai while the rest were from Rabale, NRI Coastal, Kharghar, Kamothe and Sanpada nodes of Navi Mumbai.