Investigators suspect a racket, which has a supply chain spread over many cities in India, is operating behind the series of incidents. Pune rural police have cracked at least 10 cases of thefts of silencers of Maruti Suzuki Eeco for the extraction of valuable metallic dust from the catalytic converter of these units, officers said. The matter came to light after the arrest of a wanted suspect in an ongoing investigation into a slew of such recent cases on the Pune-Ahmednagar Road, the police said.
A team from the Local Crime Branch (LCB) of Pune rural police was probing multiple cases of such thefts in connection with the multi-utility vehicles (MUVs). In April, working on a tip-off, the police had found that a car repair garage owner from Parner taluka of Ahmednagar district was involved in a racket that sold the valuable metal dust extracted from these silencers, officers said.
Accordingly, in April and May, the police arrested the garage owner Shanoor Muner Shaikh and his aide Sameer Rashid Shaikh, both residents of Ralegan Therpal village in Parner taluka. The police team was however on the lookout for one more key suspect, identified as Akash Bhandalkar.
On Saturday, LCB sleuths received a tip-off that Bhandalkar was arriving in Ranjangaon area of Pune district. A trap was laid, Bhandalkar was arrested and handed over to Shikrapur police station for further probe, they added. “Our probe suggests that these suspects used to sell the metal dust to another suspect. We have launched a search for this suspect,” said inspector Ashok Shelke, who is in charge of the LCB.
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Investigators suspect a racket, which has a supply chain spread over many cities in India, is operating behind the series of incidents. Officers said existing emission norms in the country mandate all new vehicles to have a catalytic converter in their silencers or emission systems. The catalytic converter filters pollutants that the combustion of engines produces. “For this purpose, the emission pipes have their insides coated with a mixture of platinum, rhodium and palladium. If a vehicle is new, then these metals are present in higher quantities in their silencer units. While other cars too have these layers, these specific vehicles are targetted possibly due to the higher amounts of certain metals and the comparative ease in detaching the unit from the car,” officers revealed.
The police said that the mixed dust of three metals is sold at Rs 3,000 per gram in the illegal market. Similar thefts of Eeco MUV silencers have been reported in the past from various places, including Pune city police jurisdiction. In April, the Pune city police arrested two suspects Shivprasad Rokde (21) and Ram Dhole (20), residents of Alandi, and detected six cases of such thefts.
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