Only criminals can figure out how to make big profit even out of scrap. The Mumbai Crime Branch has arrested two expert car thieves for running a scrap fraud under which they sold stolen cars
Illustration/Ravi Jadhav
Only criminals can figure out how to make big profit even out of scrap. The Mumbai Crime Branch has arrested two expert car thieves for running a scrap fraud under which they sold stolen cars.
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Modus operandi
The arrested accused - Faiz Akbar Shaikh (39) and Aziz Rashid Khan (40) - would act on the orders of a garage owner, who is now wanted in the case. The garage owner would often come across car owners who wanted to sell their automobiles for scrap. He would offer to pay the owner good money if they also provided him with the original documents.
Once the garage owner had the documents and the car in his possession, he would tell Faiz and Aziz to steal a car of the same make. For instance, if the scrap car is a WagonR, he would tell the thieves to steal another WagonR that is in a working condition and belonging to the same series and manufacturing period.
Faiz and Aziz would drive around with two other accomplices, looking for similar cars. While one of them drove, another kept an eye out for the police. Faiz and Aziz would do the actual stealing - first breaking the car's window and then deactivating the alarm. Then with the help of pliers, they would remove the car's entire ignition unit and replace it with the ignition unit from the scrap car - this allowed them to start the car easily with the scrap car's keys. Since both are the same model, it would be a perfect fit. The entire theft would take just five minutes.
After keeping a low profile and hiding the car for a few days, the thieves would then take the car to the garage owner, who would erase its unique chassis number and replace with the chassis number from the scrap car. This would ensure that the car could not be identified as stolen. After this, they could simply sell the car for a neat profit, with no worry of getting caught.
Scrap-booked
Faiz and Aziz have been involved in such thefts since 2008, and they are wanted by nearly 20 police stations in connection with more than 25 cases. They had also been arrested earlier by the Customs department, for smuggling cheap liquor from Daman to Maharashtra and Gujarat. They would transport the liquor in the stolen cars. The Crime Branch has recovered two such cars after the arrest - a WagonR and a Swift. They are on the lookout for the other accused who are still at large.
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