<![CDATA[The Delhi Police on Friday claimed to have raided an inter-State gang of auto-lifters operating in Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. The police said that those arrested have been identified as Satbir, Vijay Gulati, Imran, Laxman and Abhilash. The kingpin, Gulati, and his close accomplice Satbir are from Haryana, while the others live in Meerut, they added. The police said that they have recovered 20 stolen cars from their possession. Following several complaints of vehicle thefts, the police started an investigation into the entire process of vehicle theft and the disposal procedure. During this, they found that the stolen vehicles were disposed of after passing through three stages. The first stage included stealing the vehicles, following which a set of middlemen changed the engine and chassis numbers. Then, they would procure the documents of cars lost in accidents and register the stolen cars using those papers. In the final stage, a network of car dealers spread across the country, sold these vehicles, the police said. During interrogation of the accused, they disclosed that Gulati from Karnal in Haryana was the kingpin of the gang, the police added. Gulati procured the documents of vehicle lost in accidents. He then tampered with the engine number and chassis number of stolen cars as per the description those lost cars and sold the vehicles in the open market. Investigation has revealed that prior to theft, the team would locate vehicles of a particular make and colour, which had been declared as ‘total loss vehicle’ by insurance companies. These were then purchased by the gang through scrap dealers at a higher rate. The police said that they tampered with the details of the stolen vehicle and matched it with the total loss vehicles. On April 10, they were arrested from a location in the city when they all came to fix a deal for a stolen vehicle.]]>
