Bicycles, motorbikes, auto-rickshaws, SUV’s and trucks--from two wheelers to huge 10-wheeled tipper trucks--none of them are safe from thieves on the roads of Mira Bhayandar.
While bike and auto-rickshaw lifting incidents are a routine affair in the twin-city, a gang of thieves is now striking at will by driving away with high-end Sport Utility Vehicles from Mira Road.
While two SUV’s including a Fortuner and Innova have been lifted by thieves from the Naya Nagar area of Mira Road a 10-wheeled heavy duty tipper truck has been stolen from the highway in Kashimira in the past less than a week, throwing a tough challenge before the officials attached to the Mira Bhayandar-Vasai Virar (MBVV) police commssionerate.
Going by footages captured by Close Circuit Tele-Vision (CCTV) cameras while probing the Naya Nagar cases, the thieves seem to be members of a high-tech auto lifters' who move around in a luxury car to search unguarded vehicles and steam them by disabling their GPS devices and switching off the sensors in order to avoid being tracked.
It is also suspected that unlike the traditional practice of steal and sell, the gang executes tailor-made thefts as per the model of in-demand SUV’s preferred by the prospective customers.
Apart from recent incidents of four-wheeler thefts, bike lifting cases occupy a lion’s share in the crime registers of local police stations under the jurisdiction of the MBVV police commissionerate, even as the detection rate continues to be dismal.