14 Avanti cars, 40 engines seized during Mumbai crime branch raid of Dilip Chhabria’s Pune factory

The Mumbai crime branch’s criminal intelligence unit (CIU), which is probing the cheating case against car designer Dilip Chhabria, conducted raids at his factory

The Mumbai crime branch’s criminal intelligence unit (CIU), which is probing the cheating case against car designer Dilip Chhabria, conducted raids at his factory in Pune and seized 14 DC Avanti cars and 40 engines. Additionally, CIU also found 19 other high-end cars and bikes on the premises.

Chhabria was arrested on December 28 and is in police custody till January 7.

Chhabria was arrested on December 28 and is in police custody till January 7 for further probe. During the inquiry, police found that Chhabria and his firm had availed loans from some non-banking financial companies (NBFC) by posing as customers wanting to buy DC sports cars. The loans averaging ₹42 lakh per car had been availed by the firm, Dilip Chhabria (DC) Designs Pvt Ltd, on around 90 of the total 120 cars sold by the company in India. In some cases, loans had even been availed after the vehicles had already been sold to customers.

The incident came to light after assistant police inspector Sachin Vaze of the criminal intelligence unit (CIU) had received a tip-off about a two-seater sports car – DC Avanti – plying towards south Mumbai with a bogus registration number. A trap was laid, and the car was stopped in Colaba on December 18. When police took the vehicle into custody, they learnt that another car with the same engine and chassis number had been falsely registered in Haryana.

Chhabria had manufactured 127 DC-Avanti cars in the past four years, of which 120 had been sold in India. The crime branch suspects that 90 such cars were registered with the same engine and chassis number in different states.