Two men arrested for bike theft

Two men were arrested last week for allegedly stealing motorcycles and selling them using original documents of old vehicles they had disposed off earlier. Based on their testimony, two more men, already serving time, were registered in the same case.

Two men were arrested last week for allegedly stealing motorcycles and selling them using original documents of old vehicles they had disposed off earlier. Based on their testimony, two more men, already serving time, were registered in the same case.

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Nisar Tamboli, deputy commissioner of police (crime), added that whereas two of the accused, Ehsan Sultan Shaikh, 28, a tempo driver and Shareif Gaffer Patel, 29, a conductor with BEST, were arrested in Malvani on May 11, the other two had already been in custody for the past nine months, adding that the gang had been active for two years.

“Shaikh and Patel were arrested on the basis of an input, and after interrogating them we took custody of the other two accused,” Tamboli said, referring to Siraj Ansari, 26 and Irfan Ibrahim Shaikh, 22, both currently in Arthur Road jail for an unrelated offence.

Tamboli said the gang used to seek out people desperate to sell their vehicles. “The gang would procure the bikes along with their original documents. Usually, the bikes were old or in bad condition. They would then sell off the bike’s working parts and sell the remaining as scrap,” Tamboli said.

Siraj and Ibrahim would then steal bikes of the same make as those they had bought and disposed off, and Ehsan and Patel would remove the chassis number and engine number from the stolen bikes.

“They would then inscribe the details from the documents on the stolen bikes and sell them,” Tamboli said while adding that the crime branch unit 7 has seized 28 such stolen bikes from the gang. He added that two 3-wheelers have also been recovered and they hope to find ten more stolen bikes from the gang.