Three men who stole sports bikes, smuggled them to NE arrested

NEW DELHI: Three men of a gang from Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly that steals high-speed bikes in Delhi and sells them in northeastern states were arrested recently.

NEW DELHI: Three men of a gang from Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly that steals high-speed bikes in Delhi and sells them in northeastern states were arrested recently. Another member and a receiver haven’t been traced, said police on Sunday.

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Akhtawar, Hafiz Zakir Hussain and Kanta Singh, in their twenties, are from Manipur. They are based out of Bareilly. Akhtawar, student at a Bareilly dental college, is the son of a former Manipur MLA, said police.

The three of them and Saidul stole bikes and handed them over to a receiver in Manipur to make a quick buck. They frequently travelled to Delhi from Bareilly just to steal bikes, especially sports bikes according to their clients’ demands, a senior police officer said.

On each trip, they stole 2-3 of them. Back in Bareilly, they would park the vehicles in the parking lot of the private hostel where Akhtawar lived to avoid police attention.

“Akhtawar would click photographs of the robbed bikes and send it to their receiver, Iqbal, through Whatsapp along with their engine and chassis numbers. Iqbal would prepare fake registration certificates (RCs) of Uttar Pradesh, mentioning genuine chassis and engine numbers of the stolen bikes. He would send photographs of the forged RCs to Akhtawar using the same medium,” said the officer.

The vehicles would be loaded in trucks and transported to Imphal via Dimapur in Nagaland. At Imphal, Iqbal and his aides would collect them and sell them to clients.

Akhtawar and his associates got up to Rs 50,000 for every successful deal. The receiver would sell a bike for up to Rs1 lakh, said police.

The arrested men allegedly told police that they had been smuggling stolen bikes for over a year. They told police they stole over 50 bikes in Delhi, mostly from New Friends Colony, Safdarjung Enclave, Lajpat Nagar, Badarpur, Tilak Nagar, Uttam Nagar and Kotla Mubarakpur.

“Akhtawar belongs to a rich family... but he needed more money to fund his lavish lifestyle ,” the officer said.

Deputy commissioner of police (southeast) Mandeep Singh Randhawa said the three were caught by the anti-auto theft squad (AATS) led by inspector Ram Niwas.

“Zakir was the first to be arrested from Sunlight Colony area in Delhi. Akhtawar and Singh were held in Bareilly at his instance. Six recently registered motorcycle theft cases have been solved with their arrest,” Singh said.