The Byculla police have arrested three taxi drivers who hit upon the idea of looting their own brethren and started stealing Engine Controller Modules (ECMs), small, easily removable but crucial parts of taxis that control every function of the taxi. The trio were allegedly making profits of tens of thousands of rupees in a single night.
According to the Byculla police, investigations were initiated into the matter after complaints of ECMs being stolen started mounting in the south-central Mumbai belt. The police said that this was the first time that ECMs were being stolen and there were scant clues as to the identities of the perpetrators.
“We were registering as many as five such complaints in a single night, and there were similar complaints from nearby police stations as well. We started viewing Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) camera footage of the thefts and spotted three people engaged in the crime. We then started tracking their movements and saw that they got into a taxi parked nearby,” said senior police inspector Chimaji Adhav, Byculla police station.
Through footage from nearly 75 private and government cameras, the police tracked down the suspects to Nagpada but lost them thereafter.
The police them got details of similar offences registered in nearby police stations and then obtained dump data from all the scenes of the crime. ‘Dump data’ is literally a dump of the information of the lakhs of mobile phones that pass through the mobile tower providing network to a particular area. Dump data analysis, while a frequently used tool of investigations, is also the most cumbersome one.
After painstaking analysis, the police isolated three mobile phones that were present at all the scenes of the crime at the time of the offence, and obtained their registration details. At the same time, stills of the suspects from the CCTV footage were circulated among local informants to confirm their identity.
Based on the results of this investigation, the police on August 6 picked up Imran Khan, 31, Shafiq Sheikh, 35 and Shaukat Sheikh, 48. The trio, who turned out to be taxi drivers themselves, were searched and the police recovered six ECMS from their possession, after which they were placed under arrest.
“Due to their knowledge of taxis, the trio knew that ECMs power the entire engine and hence every function connected to it, which is, effectively, the entire taxi. As such, ECMs are in high demand and are available for Rs 15,000 in the legitimate market. The trio would steal four to five of them each night and sell them for Rs 5000 to Rs 7000 apiece,” said Adhav.
Based on the trio’s interrogation, the police on Sunday arrested Irfan Sheikh, 19, who would buy the ECMs from them. He would sell the stolen ECMs for Rs 10,000 apiece on a second-hand basis, officers said.
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