21 luxury cars worth Rs 5 crore recovered, racket run from Dubai busted

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The Delhi Police on Friday busted a gang involved in stealing luxury cars and selling those all over the country, including in Manipur and Indore. As many as Twenty-one luxury cars worth around Rs 5 crore have been recovered. The kingpin of the racket, Sharik Hussain, was running the gang from Dubai. The police have arrested 4 people involved in the racket.

The accused have been identified as Abid (30), a resident of Amroha district in Uttar Pradesh, Sagolsem Johnson Singh (27), a resident of Imphal in Manipur, Mohammad Asif (33), a resident of Meerut in Uttar Pradesh, and Salman (30), a resident of Indore in Madhya Pradesh.

On October 3, Mohammad Ikhlaque, a resident of Safdarjung Enclave, reported that around 2 am the previous day, he had parked his Toyota Fortuner car in a parking lot at Krishna Nagar, Safdarjung Enclave. The next morning, when he checked, he found that the vehicle was missing from there, a senior police officer told reporters.

During the investigation, police received a tip-off that Abid was involved in stealing the car and apprehended him from Uttam Nagar, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Southwest) Gaurav Sharma said.

During interrogation, Abid told the police that he was a member of the Hussain gang. He also disclosed that he acted as a carrier in the gang and on October 3, he had received the stolen car from Aamir, Safar and Sikander at Kashmiri Gate and then handed over the vehicle to Johnson and Vidyasunder in Imphal on the direction of Hussain, who was operating the gang from Dubai, the DCP said.

Abid told the police that several gangs with different modus operandi are engaged in stealing cars and one of the gang members is Asif.

Two police teams were formed -- one was sent to Manipur and another to Meerut. Asif was apprehended from Meerut. He told the police that he had received many stolen cars from various gang members and sold the vehicles to Salman in Indore.

According to police, Johnson, who was arrested from Manipur, told the police that he and Vidyasunder were involved in buying and selling stolen vehicles. They used to get the vehicles from Kolkata in accordance with the demand in Manipur

With the connivance of touts in the transport department in Manipur, they used to get new registration numbers for the stolen vehicles and sell those through social media platforms.

Police raided various places in Indore and arrested Salman, who ran a garage where he purchased total-loss vehicles from insurance firms for a very low price. He used to inform the gang members about the model, colour and make of the total-loss vehicles.

He used to change the engine and chassis numbers of the stolen vehicles to the engine and chassis numbers of the total-loss vehicles and sell those to genuine buyers, police said.

Hussain, the kingpin of the racket, was arrested by the Special Cell of Delhi Police in 2018. After being released from jail, he left the country and is operating his gang from Dubai now.

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