Stolen SUVs sold to online car selling portals: 20 vehicles recovered, 13 arrested

New Delhi: The Delhi Police Crime Branch on Monday claimed to have busted a gang of car thieves and arrested 13 people for allegedly running a syndicate by selling stolen vehicles to online car selling portals like CARS24 and CarDekho.

Among those arrested, two are former employees of CARS24 and one of CarDekho, police said.

Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) Sanjay Bhatia said the group would procure documents, change the engine and chassis numbers of stolen vehicles to match those of another car of the same model and colour, and then sell them to online car-selling portals.

"We have recovered 20 such SUVs including Mahindra Thar, Toyota Innova and MG Hector which the accused had sold to CARS24 and CarDekho in a past few months," Bhatia said.

The officer said the syndicate members, after stealing an SUV, would look for a similar genuine car of the same model and colour.

They would also prepare fake identification documents in the name of genuine owners, with photograph of one of themselves and further open bank accounts under the genuine owners' names.

"They also used to prepare fake RCs (registration certificate) and engrave the engine and chassis numbers of genuine cars accordingly. Thus, the stolen vehicles were made ready to be sold," Bhatia said.

He further said that one of the accused would approach the online car-selling portals to sell the stolen cars. Since the fake registration number matched the genuine one, there would be no record of the vehicle as "stolen".

The police said the accused have sold over 40 such stolen cars to the online portals by using the modus operandi.

The accused are identified as Anwar Qureshi alias Haji Anwar alias Sahil, 42, Mohd. Riyaz, 27, Kishan Kumar, 31, Shahzad Ahmad, 33, Vikash Kumar Mishra, 29, Shahil alias Shaeek, 26, Mohd Altaf, 32, Puru Singh, 24, Jayant Kumar Jena, 42, Kundan Giri, 29, Noushad, 37, Mohsin Khan, 54, and Brajesh Kumar alias Sanjeev Kumar, 30. They were all arrested from Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

Police said among the arrested, Kundan and Brajesh are ex-employees of CARS24 and Vikas Mishra is a former employee of CarDekho.

Jayant used to show vehicles to the executives of CARS24, Mohsin would procure stolen cars from Pawan alias Andha and sell them to Puru and Noushad, and Naushad would further sell the stolen cars through Puru Singh, they said.

According to police, Kishan is a secondhand car dealer, Mohd Riyaz is a private bank employee, Shahzad brought stolen cars from Indore, Shahil and Altaf helped in preparing fake documents and registration certificates of stolen vehicles.

During investigations, Anwar told police that he, along with one Shadab of Bijnor, started the sale-purchase of stolen vehicles at the instance of one Danish from Indore, MP, they said.

Anwar disclosed that as it was hard to find regular customers for stolen cars, so they explored the means to sell these vehicles to online portals, according to police.