Vehicle lifter nabbed, six cars recovered

By Our Staff Reporter

BANGALORE, OCT. 31. The Shivajinagar Police have arrested an inter-State vehicle lifter and recovered six cars allegedly stolen by him from Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The vehicles are said to be worth Rs.26 lakhs.

The incident, on the other hand, has also exposed the apparent lapse on part of the Regional Transport Office (RTO), Indiranagar, in properly verifying the documents at the time of registering the vehicles.

Police gave the name of the arrested as Jaffer (32) of Wynad District in Kerala. The accused, along with his associates who are absconding, stole the cars and created fake documents in favour of them.

The stolen cars had been sold to unsuspecting buyers in Bangalore. Mr. Keshavan, a building contractor residing in Marutisevanagar, was one of the buyers. He purchased a car from Jaffer which originally had a Tamil Nadu registration number.

The accused had got a Karnataka registration number for the car after registering the vehicle with the Indiranagar RTO and sold it to Mr. Keshavan. However, Mr. Keshavan, who somehow doubted the genuineness of the documents, contacted the RTO at Chennai and found that the documents were fake.

He lodged a complaint with the Shivajinagar Police on October 23. Police began an investigation, sent teams to Kerala and Tamil Nadu and apprehended Jaffer.

When questioned about the ``lapses'' on part of the Indiranagar RTO, which had issued a new registration number for all the six cars without verifying the genuineness of the documents, police came out with a series of explanations.

A senior police officer told The Hindu that the local RTO authorities had reportedly not contacted their counterparts in Tamil Nadu to check the veracity of the documents before granting a new registration number to the vehicles here.

Instead, they had asked Jaffer himself to get a No-objection Certificate from the Chennai RTO. Jaffer had got a fake NoC and produced it at the Indiranagar RTO, police said. ``Had the RTO taken adequate measures to verify the documents, the theft and forgery would have come to light much earlier,'' the officer said.

Police are of the opinion that a large number of vehicle theft cases can be prevented, and also detected, if the RTO authorities strictly and thoroughly verify all the documents at the time of transfer of ownership of old vehicles.

Meanwhile, the City Police Commissioner, Mr. T.Madiyal, has announced rewards for the members of team, led by Shivajinagar Inspector, Mr. B.K.Umesh, which arrested Jaffer and recovered the vehicles. Further investigations are on.

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Section  : Southern States
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