Four men have been arrested on Wednesday for allegedly running a car theft racket that had spread to various states, police said.
The gang would steal parked cars from the city and its fringes and sell them to people from Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Nagaland and Manipur, an officer of the Bidhannagar commissionerate said.
The police have seized three cars — a Toyota Fortuner, a Toyota Innova Crysta and a Hyundai Creta — from them, the officer said.
The officer said they were probing how the group stole cars fitted with modern security systems.
An officer in the investigating team said they had received information that the racket had been operating from somewhere near Dum Dum and the fringes of Rajarhat. Based on the tipoff, a team from the airport police station had a few days ago raided a garage near the Salua intersection, on the fringes of Rajarhat, where they found the Toyota Innova Crysta.
They then traced Mohammed Salauddin, a resident of Maheshtala, in South 24 Parganas, who had taken the car there. Salauddin allegedly failed to produce any documents for the car.
“Initially, he said the car belonged to a relative. But after we questioned him, he admitted that he traded in stolen vehicles and had gone to Salua to sell the vehicle,” the officer said.
Based on Salauddin’s statements, the team raided a hideout in Maheshtala and recovered the Toyota Fortuner and the Hyundai Creta. The cops also arrested another alleged gang member, Naushad Sheikh.
Naushad and Salauddin apparently told the officers that they would steal cars parked along roads in the city and on the fringes. After stealing vehicles, they would drive them to their hideouts and inform people dealing in stolen vehicles in other states. They would arrive in a couple of days and drive away with the vehicles.
“Our officers then asked the two to call up their accomplices and tell them that a good SUV was up for sale. A deal was struck for Rs 3.7 lakh,” said the officer.
The cops made the two arrested men wait with an SUV, while a team of plain clothes men kept watch from a distance.
When two men turned up on Tuesday night to buy the SUV, the cops arrested them. The two have been identified as Mohammed Gufran and Mohammed Jamil, brothers from Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh. “More than Rs 3.7 lakh was seized from them,” the officer said.
The men from Ghazipur have apparently told the police that they would fix fake licence plates on stolen cars before driving them down to their hometown.
“Once there, they would change the chassis and engine numbers and get the vehicles reregistered. They would then sell them for double or triple the price they had paid for them,” another officer said.