Gone in 60 Seconds

 

 

How you wish your car would turn into a piece of real estate, reaping immediate profits for you once you decided to sell it off? Looks like a distant dream? Not really. If you live in Delhi, you would have to travel just 60 kilometres to make this dream come true. Let us put this in figures for you. Suppose you have a car which is worth 4 lakh rupees. You can sell off this car for 6 lakh rupees. For this, you will have to visit Soteeganj near Meerut.

In the middle of the Meerut city, towards the Meerut-Begumpul road, one could always find old cars and mounds of spare parts dotting both ends of the road. This is the Soteeganj area. It looks like a scrap yard and that is what people would describe it as if you care to ask them. But beneath the surface lies a thriving business of sale-purchase of stolen cars. The dealers are magicians who would offer 1.5 times more money for your car. And how do they do it? This is how. These enterprising men first lodge a First Information Report (FIR) for the theft of your car and get you insurance compensation for your car. Then they would take out the spare parts of your car and make money out of them. These are not ordinary thieves. The have connections in the higher echelons of power. So much so that policemen don’t even come here out of fear of transfer or a sound bashing.

In the last week of January, this year, when the Police arrested a man called Yogendra Kumar, they could not believe their own ears on what Kumar had revealed to them. They could have never imagined that behind the facade of scrap, a well-orgainsed illegal business was thriving. Before Yogendra could receive the insurance money, the Police spilled water on his plans by recovering his car from one of the scrap dealers in Soteeganj. Says the incharge of the Lalkurti police station, P.V. Sharma, “Yogendra had registered a false FIR to report the theft of his Bolero car (HR 37 B 6276) and then sold it off to a scrap dealer for 3.50 lakhs.” In Delhi as well, TSI met a gang that has a similar modus operandi: registering a false FIR and then guaranteeing the compensation from the insurance agency. A member of this gang, Jeetu claims that they have ‘setting’ with the Police and insurance companies as well. “Once we clinch the deal, I go with my accomplice and steal the car. The car owner then files an FIR and we sell it off to dealers in Soteeganj,” reveals Jeetu. The gang charges 10 percent of the car price as labour charges. It doesn’t come as a surprise, then, that Soteeganj has kept the police of many north Indian states busy for many years. Most car thefts in states like Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal have been attributed to Soteeganj. The incharge of Soteeganj police station, Upendra Yadav accepts this. “Police from Delhi and other states come here regularly, investigating cases of car theft. We also organise raids as and when we get information.” The truth is perhaps reflected in what the local BJP MLA Satya Prakash has to say. “One day, right in front of me, a vehicle was done to pieces. I have raised this issue many times in the assembly,“ he expresses his helplessness.

According to automobile experts, this trade is quite profitable. “ The scrap dealers buy the stolen cars at cheaper rates but earn handsomely by selling spare parts,” says Dinesh Sharma, an automobile engineer. This is not just a case of car theft but destruction of government property as well. It is illegal to tear down vehicles. Only those vehicles which are no longer fit to ply on roads can be dismantled and that too after seeking permission from the transport authorities.

The dealers of Soteeganj also delve in preparing fake vehicle documents and then selling off the stolen vehicles as genuine ones. To get into the depth of the matter, a TSI team posed at times as car thieves and sometimes as customers. Through these investigations, it was established beyond doubt that this business is being conducted on a very large scale. This TSI correspondent reached Soteeganj, posing as a car thief, where he met Rashid, who deals in scrap. During conversation with him, Rashid spoke about his ‘big contacts’ and claimed that no one would be able to touch anyone who sold stolen cars to him. “We have people not only here but in other states as well,” boasted Rashid. TSI proposed to pay 20,000 rupees for a two-year old Maruti 800 car which finally got finalised at 30,000 rupees. This correspondent left Rashid with the promise to receive the car next day. TSI then started looking for a person dealing with fake car papers. We zeroed upon a man called Ramesh. He agreed to make fake car papers for us. The cost, he said, depended on the the model and the cost of the car. The deal for fake papers is usually settled between 25 thousand to one lakh rupees. Actually, it is easier for the car thieves to sell the stolen vehicle to the scrap dealers. This entails a high margin for the dealers as well. A scrap dealer in Ludhiana city told TSI, “Even if we get paid less we prefer selling our vehicles to scrap dealers. They tear down the vehicle and the police is left with no evidence against us.”

"We prefer selling our vehicles to the scrap dealers. They tear down the vehicle and the police is left with no evidence against us"

The business of making fake documents and selling them to people is more profitable. Scrap dealers buy vehicles which are rendered useless due to accidents or otherwise. They tear down the vehicle and sell the parts but keep the Registration Certificate (RC) and other documents with them. These documents are used for preparing documents for stolen vehicles. The scrap dealers carefully put the chaises number and engine number of the non-usable vehicles on the stolen ones and make them look legal. This came into light recently when the Anti-vehicle Theft Squad of the West District of Delhi Police apprehended Nasir and Nafees who were gang leaders of a vehicle theft gang. Nasir and Nafees belong to Meerut. Nafees used to run a garage while Nasir was into lifting vehicles from Delhi. According to Inspector Vijay Singh, the team leader of the police squad which arrested the car thief gang leaders, “First Nafees used to buy old and non-usable vehicles, which were torn off. Thereafter he used to tell Nasir to steal vehicles of the same model and colour. Afterwards, the chaises number and engine number were very finely changed with that of the dismantled vehicle. This made it quite difficult to recognise the stolen vehicle.”

Many sources have told TSI that the dealers in Soteeganj have very high political connections. That is why several police officers who came to investigate cases in Soteeganj area where roughed up by these dealers. Around six months back, the then incharge of Abu lane Police Station, K.K. Sharma and Sub-Inspector Anurag Gautam went to Soteeganj to recover a stolen Scorpio. They were badly beaten by the dealers. A few days before this event, stones were pelted on a team of Delhi Police. An IPS officer posted in Meerut was slapped when he had gone for one such investigation. The scrap dealers also roughed up ex-Assistant Superintendent of Police, Meerut City, Ajay Mishra when he went for one such raid “Whenever any action seems imminent, these scrap dealers, who belong to the minority community, use their their religion as a safeguard. The police action is branded as minority harassment and the community leaders raise a hue and cry,” says a police officer. At times the situation has turned so bad that the administration and police have had to suspend the entire operation in fear of communal riots. And then under the pressure of politicians the cases against the scrap dealers had to be put on the back burner. Meerut MP Shahid Akhlaq terms the action taken against the scrap dealers as one motivated with the intent of harassing the minority. He says, “Scrap dealers do their business honestly. They are being harassed just because they are in minority.”

"Whenever any action seems imminent, these scrap dealers, belonging to minority community, use religion as a safegaurd"

But investigation by TSI reveals the true story. Last year, a police team led by ASP Ajay Mishra raided a shop and a godown owned by Haji Nizam, one of the biggest scrap dealers in the area. The police caught a Scorpio vehicle being torn down in Nizami’s godown. The police also recovered around 450 engines, belonging mostly to stolen vehicles. Twelve people were arrested and two of them were booked under the National Security Act (NSA). The entire drill turned into a futile exercise when when recently the Uttar Pradesh government repealed NSA against the two accused under the pressure of a state minister and a Member Parliament. Things did not end here. ASP Ajay Mishra and SHO Vijay Kumar were transferred. Why was NSA repealed against the two accused? TSI tried contacting Senior Superintendent of Police Navneet Sikera but even after repeated attempts he was not available.

Soteeganj is again flourishing. The illegal business is attaining new heights with each passing day. Meanwhile, at the Soteeganj Police Station, a policeman sits exhausted. “Whenever I pass through that area I feel ashamed of myself. It would have been better if I were transferred from this area. At least I wouldn’t have been hiding my face from these criminals.” His throat chokes and he goes silent. Someone blows a horn outside. The policeman hurls abuses at his motherhood. ALL CARS LEAD TO SOTEEGANJ

January 2007: North East District Police of Delhi arrests a car thief in Meerut, 10 vehicles recovered.
December 2006: The Anti-Vehicle theft squad of Delhi Police arrests Shahid and Ateek of Meerut.
December 2006: Sultanpuri police arrests 6 people, including 3 scrap dealers from Meerut and Deoband.
September 2006: Delhi Police apprehends Nasir, scrap dealer from Meerut. 12 Luxury cars are recovered.
July 2006: South West District police of Delhi arrests vehicle thieves, Praveen Randhawa and Sukhvinder.