The Hindu : New Delhi News : Two auto-lifters arrested again

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 23, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

Two auto-lifters arrested again

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, MARCH 22. Two persons, allegedly involved in auto-lifting for the past many years and arrested a couple of times earlier, have again been arrested by the Special Staff of the South Delhi police. The police have recovered three stolen cars, 15 blank registration certificates of transport authorities in Delhi and Haryana, 82 duplicate keys and forged stamps from the accused.

A Special Staff team led by Inspector Rajender Singh had arrested Harpreet, earlier involved in 11 cases of vehicle thefts, on March 15. At his instance, the gang leader, Vikas Chauhan, was arrested on Monday. He was also found to be in possession of narcotics substances.

The police said Vikas, earlier involved in 300 cases of motor vehicle thefts, was released from jail a few months ago and had joined hands with Harpreet to steal vehicles. The Special Cell of the Delhi police had arrested Vikas first in 2001 and then the Special Staff arrested him again in 2003. The two accused, along with one Chhotu, mostly stole luxury cars from Noida, West and North-West Delhi.

According to the police, Harpreet usually disposed of vehicles to Nirmal Singh, a transporter in Amritsar. Some of the vehicles were also sold to Dharmender of Jammu. He had sent 36 vehicles to the two places. A Maruti car would fetch them Rs. 45,000, a Santro or a Maruti Zen was sold for Rs. 75,000 and Sumo for Rs. 80,000. Luxury cars like Honda City, Hyundai Accent and Scorpio fetched the gang Rs. 1 lakh.

The stolen cars were transported to Amritsar and Jammu on forged papers. Harpreet would buy stamp pad letters' kit from Chawri Bazar in North Delhi for Rs. 500 and use them to prepare forged documents. He would collect blank insurance certificates from any insurance agent to use them while making fake documents. Similarly, he would also procure blank registration certificates from transport authorities. They kept in touch through mobile phones -- each of them kept at least five different SIM cards -- when the stolen vehicles were in transit.

Harpreet, son of an aeronautical engineer working with Indian Airlines and brother of a software engineer, was presently working for a company supplying headphones on behalf of a US-based mobile phone company. He had earlier come in touch with Vikas in Tihar Jail. The police said Vikas keeps changing his networks to evade detection.

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