Sleuths of the detective department, with help from their Uttar Pradesh counterparts, have busted an inter-state car theft racket operating across the city.

The team recovered four expensive cars, stolen from Calcutta streets over the past five months, from a village in the UP-Nepal border on Friday.

Deputy commissioner (detective department) Jawed Shamim said Dharmendra Sharma, who used to drive the stolen vehicles from the city to UP, was arrested. “We will bring him to the city shortly.”

According to Shamim, the four cars — two Santros, a Tavera and a Bolero — were seized at Kushinagar. “The vehicles were stolen from Shyampukur, Shakespeare Sarani, Tollygunge and Bhowanipore in broad daylight. They would have been sent to Nepal shortly,” the officer said.

Sharma told the police that he was appointed by Anil Srivastav, a resident of Gopalnagar in UP. “Srivastav used to visit Calcutta often. He stayed in hotels at Park Circus and Shakespeare Sarani and held meetings with members of the gang,” said an officer of the detective department’s motor theft section

“The racket employs people to drive the car out of the city. Srivastav keeps another set of drivers ready on the outskirts to take the cars to the Bengal-UP border. The third group of drivers are responsible for transporting the cars to hideouts in UP,” added the officer.