A Calcuttan, who had hired a driver through an app, lost his new Mahindra Scorpio which was allegedly stolen by the driver and sold outside Bengal, police said on Sunday.
The vehicle was resold at least thrice and its registration number and chassis number were changed to avert detection, the cops said.
The police have busted an interstate motor theft racket and recovered the SUV from Samastipur in Bihar, close to the India-Nepal border.
On May 29, Haridevpur resident Rajesh Singh had gone for lunch at a hotel in south Calcutta with his family. After completing lunch, the family failed to locate the SUV and found the driver’s phone switched off.
Singh lodged a complaint at Bhowanipore police station. Probing the case, the cops reached a hotel in south Calcutta where the driver had told Singh that he was staying.
“We found the CCTV footage of the driver and his associates. But the documents he had used at the hotel turned out to be fake,” said an officer.
Tracking the last GPS location of the vehicle, the police tracked it to Asansol before the device was switched off.
The police on June 11 could track down the accused driver, named Mohit Kumar, from Singhbhum district in Jharkhand and arrested him.
More arrests were made subsequently.
“Based on the statement of Mohit, a raid was conducted and mastermind of the operation, Tushar Dutta of Sidhgora in Jamshedpur, was arrested from one of his hideouts under the jurisdiction of Baruipur Police district on June 16. Mohit had handed over the car to Tushar and got his commission,” said an officer.
Tushar allegedly sold the car to a third party through a person named Avinash Singh of an automobile dealer whose office is located on CIT Road, the police said.
Avinash was arrested and he admitted to have sold the stolen vehicle to one Raghuveer Kumar of Samastipur, Bihar. Raghuveer was arrested at Barauni on Saturday from Raxaul Weekly Express compartment.
“During interrogation, Avinash said that he deals with second hand and stolen vehicles. He bought the said Scorpio at a low price and then altered the chassis number and registration number of the vehicle with that of a similar model that was damaged in an accident,” an officer of Kolkata Police said.
He then sold it to another car dealer in the Sitamarhi area near the Nepal border.
Following this lead, a raid was conducted at the office of an auto showroom at Car Bazar, Pupri in Sitamarhi and the stolen car was recovered, the police said.
The cops said the accused are members of a pan-India inter-state vehicle theft racket. This group is wanted in Delhi, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and other parts of the country.
All the accused are in police remand at present.