The Hindu : New Delhi News : Auto-lifters' gang busted

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Dec 05, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Auto-lifters' gang busted

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, DEC. 4. Four persons, including three Nepalese nationals, who allegedly stole vehicles from Delhi and Punjab and disposed them of in Nepal in connivance with the police there, were arrested by the Anti-Auto Theft Squad of South Delhi police this Friday. While two of the stolen vehicles were recovered from their possession, the police said the accused were involved in at least 100 auto-theft cases.

According to the Deputy Commissioner of Police (South Delhi), Pravir Ranjan, the Anti-Auto Theft Squad recently received a tip-off that a gang operating from Uttam Nagar had been stealing expensive vehicles from the district and disposing them of in Nepal and some of them at Amritsar in Punjab.

On Friday, the police found out that some of the gang members would come to Kalindi Kunj to meet their leader, Deepak Khanna. While checking the vehicles passing by the area, the police spotted a Scorpio and a Maruti car, whose occupants tried to flee on seeing them. The police overpowered the four occupants. They were identified as Deepak Khanna, a resident of Uttam Nagar, Shyam Sunder Shah, Uttam Bahadur and Naresh Pant, from Nepal. The Scorpio was found stolen from Chandigarh, while the Maruti had been stolen from Janakpuri.

During interrogation, the accused revealed that they were taking the vehicles to Nepal. They disclosed that they stole vehicles from Lajpat Nagar, Defence Colony, Okhla, Hazrat Nizamuddin, Srinivaspuri and other places in Delhi and the very next day dispatched them to Nepal through Uttaranchal and Uttar Pradesh borders.

Interestingly, in Nepal, the accomplices of the gang members have good links with the police, which impound these vehicles as unclaimed and sell them to the culprits on the pretext of auctioning. Those who were buying such vehicles have been identified as Ganga Bahadur, Sujan and Rocky. After buying the vehicles, they would get them registered with the Nepal transport authorities and sell them to innocent people.

The police efforts were on to recover other stolen vehicles and arrest other gang members.

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