Nagpur: The Detection Branch of Ganeshpeth Police Station busted an inter-state gang of vehicle lifters and arrested three of its members after painstaking investigations. However, the kingpin of the gang is still at large and is being hunted. Cops have recovered three Tavera cars, two Indigo cars and four two-wheelers collectively worth Rs 22.10 lakh from the possession of arrested gang members. Interestingly, the gang lifted specific vehicles from city, Mumbai, and other cities of Maharashtra as well as other states on “demand” from other gangs operating elsewhere.
The arrested gang members have been identified as Mohd Asadullah Khan alias Nadeem Abdul Najib Khan (42) of Om Nagar, Koradi, Mohd Salman Quereshi (22), behind Jama Masjid, Sadar, and Shyam Jaimangal Chauhan (43) Trimurti Nagar. The mastermind of the gang who is dodging the police net is Uday Maroti Patil, resident of Mumbai.
Addressing a press conference, the DCP Zone-3 Rajkumar said that that the Ganeshpeth cops busted the gang on the basis of very little information. The trail of investigation led the cops to other cities such as Aurangabad, Beed, Karnataka and Tirupati and other cities. Earlier also, some of the gang members were arrested from Yavatmal, Mumbai and over 50 cars and two-wheelers were recovered. The modus operandi of the gang is that it lifted the vehicles of the same make whose other models had turned 10-year old and were out of the roads. After stealing the vehicles according to the requirement the gang would then put the chassis and registration number of old vehicles in the stolen cars to make them legible. The old cars were then scrapped. It means, the stolen vehicles had original papers of old vehicles as well as chassis numbers and registration numbers. These cars were then sold as “used cars.”
The vehicles recovered from arrested gang members include a white-coloured Tavera without registration number, chassis and engine number, a white Tavera (MH-31/CR 2869), a white Tavera (MH-12/GN 2723), a white Indigo car (AP-12/AJ 9277), a white Indigo car without number, and four two-wheelers. The collective value of recovered vehicles id Rs 22.10 lakh.
The task was carried out by Senior PI M K Chavan, API A P Taksande, naik police constables Anand Wankhede, Ajay Giradkar, constables Ashish Bahad, and Sharad Chambhare under the guidance of DCP Zone-3 and ACP Kotwali.
The DCP Rajkumar patted the Detection Branch of Ganeshpeth Police Station for the outstanding work.
