150-car congame ends after 6 years

 

MUMBAI: The long but lazy arm of the law finally caught up with three men who-in a six-year period-brazenly sold about 150 brand-new cars after securing car loans from banks using fake documents. The cars include Skodas, Lancers, Balenos and even a Mercedes-which one of the accused “gifted” his wife. The accused, identified as Ajaykumar Kunwar Singh Dahiya, 32, Ankit Kothari, 22 and Mehul Shah, 24, were arrested in Andheri on Thursday morning.

 

According to the police, the trio used to make bogus PAN cards and ration cards by affixing photographs of different people. They then submitted the fake documents in various city banks like SBI, DCB and UTI, and applied for car loans, the police said. “After the loans had been sanctioned by the banks, they used to purchase posh cars. The purchase was made online. We believe some bank officials were hand-in-glove with the trio and efforts are on to trace them,” said Senior Police Inspector Arvind Mahabdi, Andheri police station.

 

Dahiya then drove the cars to Delhi and Haryana and sold them to other car dealers there, police said.

 

The police claim to have identified three such dealers and are on the lookout for them.

 

The three, who were defrauding banks since 2000, also had an Economic Offences Wing cheating case registered against them in 2002 in Malad and Dindoshi.  Mahabdi said that Dahiya was caught when he was trying to cheat ICICI Bank in Andheri in a similar fashion.

 

The police said they seized three debit and credit cards, three PAN cards and several photographs of people on whose behalf the loans were issued. While Singh was the “mastermind”, Shah used to make fake documents on a computer.

 

Dahiya gave the Mercedes to his wife Sonia Singh six months ago, the police added.