Part of carjacking gang, 3 RTO employees forge papers for stolen SUVs

Gurgaon: The Special Task Force (STF) of Haryana Police has busted an inter-state gang specialising in stealing and selling high-end luxury SUVs across Delhi-NCR. It has arrested four of its members, three of which are employees of the regional transport office (RTO) of Meham, Rohtak and used to make fake registration papers for the stolen vehicles.
The gang has made arrangements with officials of several RTOs across Haryana and managed to get fake registration papers made for the stolen vehicles by changing the details of engine and chassis numbers, the STF said. It then sold the vehicles in the used car market.
Active since 2017, the gang has stolen and sold around 200 high-end luxury SUVs so far, police said. The four members arrested on Sunday night have been identified as Meham RTO clerk Anil Kumar, computer operators Krishan Kumar and Sombir, and Praveen Kumar, a dealer of used cars in Dadri. The STF also recovered around 13 vehicles, including Fortuners, Innovas and Scorpios, with a market value of around Rs 5 crore.
The STF team found that the maximum number of fake registration papers of stolen vehicles — 56 — had been made at the Meham RTO. Other RTOs that registered fake papers for the stolen vehicles include those in Gurgaon (4), Tosham in Bhiwani (3), Panipat (3), Kurukshetra (3), Charkhi Dadri (7), Hisar (4) Hansi (2), Rohtak (3), Nuh (1) and Mahendergarh (5). The officials of all these RTOs are now under scanner.
Anil, Krishan and Sombir helped the gang prepare fake papers and also got them in touch with RTO officials of other districts.
“We have recovered records taken from Sonipat and Meham RTOs from the arrested men and they have admitted that they were involved in the registration of around 200 stolen vehicles,” said DIG (STF) Satheesh Balan.
The mastermind of the gang — Amit Singh from Rohtak — and other members are still at large.
Talking about the gang’s modus operandi, Balan said Balan said the gang gets details of discarded files of SUVs which have been dumped or sent to the scrapyard after an accident. They steal vehicles of similar make from Delhi-NCR and prepare its registration papers using the details of dumped vehicles.
To steal the desired vehicle, they use Chinese gadgets to hack its system and take control, after which they disable the GPS system and drive the vehicle out of NCR. By the time police register a FIR and start an investigation, the gang has the fake registration papers ready and sells the vehicle in the used car market, all within a few days. Top-end Fortuners, which cost around Rs 40 lakh, are sold for Rs 15 lakh in the used car market.
In the last one year, over 4,000 vehicles — out of which several hundred are Fortuners — have been stolen from Gurgaon. Only a handful out of these have been traced. The gang has in-depth knowledge about the vehicle’s make and functioning and target only the top-model and fully-automatic versions, police said.
The devices used by the carjackers bypass the SUV’s engine control module, and it is extremely difficult to safeguard vehicles against such thefts, police said.
These gadgets can cost anything around Rs 50,000 to 1.5 lakh and are available online or at car workshops, where they are used to unlock vehicles that have been locked accidentally with the key inside the vehicle.