The Crime Branch claim to have busted a notorious gang of auto lifters on Wednesday. The officials arrested 14 accused persons. The interstate nexus was busted by raids conducted across the country including Delhi, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal , Telangana, Goa and Maharashtra among others. The recovered vehicles included luxury cars like Hyundai Creta, Toyota Fortuner, Kia Seltos, Baleno and Innova amongst others. They have worked out 38 cases of stolen luxury
vehicles.

The Crime Branch team of Eastern and Western branch collaborated together to bust a gang involved in receiving and selling of stolen luxury cars from Delhi to Western and Southern parts of India. They subsequently arrested 14 buyers and sellers of stolen vehicles and 25 stolen luxury vehicles, 18 fake number plates & 6 forged registration certificates which had been seized from Goa, Mumbai, Pune & Hyderabad. In addition to this , 16 tampered engines were also recovered from the arrest along with materials used to forge high security number plates.

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Senior officials informed that during the interrogation it was found that the accused operated the syndicate through social media apps. It was also further retained the gang was involved in lifting the cars was to first identify vehicles of particular make and colour declared as ‘Total Loss’ by insurance companies. The vehicles identified were then purchased by the gang. The parts of purchased vehicles were disposed off as scrap, while their documents were retained. The auto-lifters either used a specially designed screwdriver like tool to break open the lock of the car which is key operated or they used a software tab to prepare a duplicate key of the car so targeted by them. They used master keys to start the car and flee within seconds.

Crime Branch has also issued advisory to manufacturers and insurers to tighten security to avoid security breaches of vehicles. They advise manufacturers to place a sim or a chip easily accessible to customer to give commands in case of a stolen vehicle. The insurance companies must ensure that the vehicle declared as total loss due to accident, its engine and chassis should be blocked and information be uploaded on websites in public interest. The second hand buyers should make sure that before buying any car they should either check the engine and chassis details themselves or get the same checked through some agency.