The Central Unit of Crime Branch of Navi Mumbai police have arrested nine persons and busted an inter-state racket who allegedly sold more than 400 Bharat Stage (BS) IV cars meant for scrap by making fake documents and embedding them with old chassis numbers. The police also recovered 151 cars worth Rs 7.15 crore from them.
Among the arrested included the owner of Auto Auction India, Chembur which had taken 407 BS-IV vehicles from Automotive Manufacturers Pvt Limited to scrap them. However, instead of scrapping those vehicles, the owner of the auction company used fake documents like RC books and changed the chassis number and sold them in different states illegally.
As per the Supreme Court order, no new motor vehicles with BS-IV emission norms can be sold after March 31, 2020. If vehicles could not be sold by that deadline, such vehicles would have to be sold as scrap. Following the order, the car manufacturing company sold those leftover BS-IV vehicles in scrap to Automotive Manufacturers Private Limited (AMPL). The AMPL after removing the chassis number gave them to Auto Auction India, Chembur to scrap.
In January, the Central Unit of Crime Branch of Navi Mumbai police received information about the racket and following which arrested nine persons from Panvel, Pune, Hyderabad, and Ahmedabad.
The arrested have been identified as Shaban Quraishi, 32, a resident of Mumbai, Manohar Jadhav, 31, a resident of Hyderabad, Anam Siddiqui, 42, a resident of Chembur, Wasim Shaikh, 31, a resident of Bandra, Gaurav Dembalaa, resident of Haryana, Prashant Shivrathri, 26, a resident of Hyderabad, Rashid Khan, 42, a resident of Jabalpur, Chandrasekhar Gadekar, 31, a resident of Pune and Imran Chopda, 38, a resident of Ahmedabad.
The mastermind of the racket was Siddiqui who owned Auto Auction India, Chembur had bought the vehicles to scrape them.
Bipin Kumar Singh, commissioner of police of Navi Mumbai said that the accused had opened an office in a hotel in Panvel and sold these vehicles at a low price and got them registered in different RTOs in different states including Himachal Pradesh (HP), Arunachal Pradesh (AP). He added that they recovered five vehicles registered with fake documents in HP and AP while total recovery of car was 151.
The accused Imran Chopda bought a computerized machine to change the Chassis number of the vehicles. “They used old vehicles’ chassis number as the original chassis number was removed before giving for scrappage,” said Singh. He added that they have recovered other materials like printers, stamp paper, invoices to make fake documents from them.
Multiple teams of Navi Mumbai police went to Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Telangana, Karnataka AP and HP to bring back 151 sold cars.
