Mumbai cops bust inter-state vehicle theft racket; 5 held

In a wide-ranging operation, members of the Mumbai crime branch arrested five of a gang who ran a vehicle theft racket in Maharashtra and Gujarat. The police recovered 21 vehicles, including two trucks, from four cities across Maharashtra and Karnataka. Two of the masterminds hail from a village in Uttar Pradesh.

The arrested accused have been identified as Mohammed Gulfam Khan alias Sadiq, 22, Salim Syed, 25 Azhar Shaikh, 26, Irfan Khan alias Pappu, 30 and Mainuddin Pathan, 40. Pappu and Sadiq, who hail from Pratapgadh, UP, were the brains behind the racket.

"We had received information about the gang from our sources and started working on the leads," said an officer from the Anti-Motor Vehicle theft (MV) cell of Mumbai crime branch, which carried out the operation. "After months of hard work, we managed to nab all the accused."

The five were arrested from Ahmednagar, Aurangabad, Kolhapur in Maharashtra and from Belgaum in Karnataka. Of the 21 vehicles recovered, 19 are high-end cars and the other two are trucks. Together, the vehicles are valued at around Rs 1.25 crore. The police also seized tools and other implements that the gang would use to steal the vehicles.

"The accused would do a reccee and once they had decided which vehicle to steal, they would immediately make a duplicate key of that vehicle and flee with it," said Dhananjay Kulkarni, Deputy Commissioner of Police, (Detection).

While some of the five would steal the car, the others would work prepare bogus papers for the vehicle, such as registration documents, etc. "They would later sell off the car to second-hand auto dealers or take loans after mortgaging the stolen vehicle," said Kulkarni.

He said that Pappu and Sadiq, who hail from Pratapgadh, Uttar Pradesh, and the others would come to Mumbai especially to steal vehicles and then return to their native place after the crime.