Car thefts rise in `wild west'

The western suburbs have emerged as a major hub for car thieves, with as many as 1,320 vehicle thefts reported in the last one year alone. Motor insurance surveyors and car dealers estimate the vehicle theft industry has touched around Rs 100 crore and is growing rapidly every year. Despite busting several gangs, police say the battle is a tough and ongoing one.
"The suburbs are especially vulnerable to these orchestrated thefts, as compared to south Mumbai. Some garage owners are also involved in this racket. They interchange spare parts of the stolen vehicles with old and damaged vehicles bought at dirt cheap prices,'' said Mahendra Dhruva, president of the Indian Institute of Insurance Surveyors (IIS). DCP (Zone IX) Niket Kaushik said, "We learnt about quite a few such garage owners and initiated action against them. We also check garages regularly to keep tabs on such activity.''
Dhruva said that insurance firms normally sell retrieved vehicles along with registration numbers as they fetch a good price. "If they sell these vehicles as scrap, the business will be less lucrative,'' Dhruva said. The IIIS has now notified insurance companies not to auction old vehicles along with their registration numbers.
Surveyors said in many cases, even the car driver is involved in the racket. Pappu Qureshi, a Malad resident, had given his Tavera to his driver as the latter wanted to go to Shirdi along with his friends on February 23. But on his return the driver told him that the car was stolen. After four days he broke down and admitted that he had sold the Tavera to a gang of car thieves. Qureshi, who registered an FIR at Nasik road police station, has since been trying to trace his car, though two of the driver's accomplices were apprehended by the police last week.
Motor insurance surveyors also pointed out that thanks to the elections, in the last few weeks there has been an increase in the number of insurance claims for SUVs like Toyota Qualis, Chevrolet Tavera and Tata Sumo. "There is an increase in demand for these cars for campaigns and hence thieves are stealing and selling them,'' Dhruva said.
Police officials said operators like Abdul Mannan Mofiz, Mohammad Faiz and Salim, who were arrested recently, would create fake registration numbers and papers for the stolen cars. These vehicles would then be sold in north-east states besides Bengal, Orissa, Bihar and Jharkhand. But the thieves would rarely know who the car was sold to. For instance, Faiz and Salim would steal a car and inform Mofiz (the dealer) about it. The latter would then fly to Mumbai along with a driver and take the vehicle to Kolkata after changing the number plate and creating duplicate papers for it. Once in his Kolkata garage, he changed the engine and chassis numbers of the vehicle and give it to a sub-dealer in some state who then sold the vehicle to a customer.
Kaushik, who was part of a special squad which arrested the thieves said, "The car thieves work in a chain, where one person is not aware about other links. We have caught several car thieves but they do not know whom the stolen vehicles were sold to, making recovery very difficult.''
Vehicles parked on the roads are considered more easy prey.
"Many residents in the city park their cars on the road due to lack of parking space and these become easy targets for car thieves,'' a senior police official said.
Insurance firms say that the tedious process of recovery of cars affects them as well as the owners. "It is estimated that only 15 per cent of the cars are recovered as the thieves quickly change the registration numbers and sell the car outside the state,'' said Mukesh Thakker, development officer with New India Assurance Company.