In a bizarre incident, a man set ablaze 18 vehicles at South Delhi's Madangir village area during the early hours of Tuesday. The entire incident was captured in one of the CCTV footages where the man, in his mid 20s, appears to be drunk and within a span of a minute, takes out petrol from one bike and set the other seven and some cars ablaze. Teams have been formed to nab the accused.

According to a senior police officer, the incident took place on the intervening night of Monday and Tuesday. We received a police control room call at around 3 am informing about burning of vehicles in the area.

On reaching the spot, the police personnel found that a man has set 18 vehicles on fire, out of which 14 were motorcycles and four were cars. Among the vehicles which were gutted to ashes, eight were two wheelers and two were cars while six motorcycles and two cars were left partially burnt.

"As per the CCTV footage accessed by the police, the accused man, aged 25, set the vehicles on fire after opening the fuel pipe of one of the motorcycles. He opened the fuel pipes of six motorcycles due to which a lot of petrol came out of the tank and when he lit the matchstick, car parked nearby were also set a fire," said Vijay Kumar, Deputy commissioner of Police (South).

Police said that the accused seems to be intoxicated at the time of the incident.

"We tried looking for him in the locality, however he could not be found. We have formed several teams who are working to nab him. We have registered a case under sections 435 (Mischief by fire or explosive substance with intent to cause damage) and 427 (Mischief causing damage to the amount of fifty rupees.) of the Indian Penal Code against him," said Kumar.

According to Rishabh Raj, a local, we woke up to a thick blanket of smoke and thought somebody house had caught fire. "When we rushed down, we saw the cars had caught fire and there was smoke all over. No body could understand the reason of the fire. It was later when we realised that around 18 vehicles were set on fire," said Raj.