Thieves who disabled security features to steal cars arrested

Four men, who stole luxury cars by disabling the car’s security features, were arrested on Friday morning. Police recovered a diagnostic tool, used by car companies to check the security features of a car from the thieves.

One of the men, Ajay alias Sanjay, who has around two dozen cases of vehicle thefts against him had recently purchased the diagnostic kit.

The four confessed that in the last few months, they used the kit to steal at least 17 high-end luxury cars such as Audi, BMW and other sports utility vehicles. One of the four men is a retired army official.

DCP (South) Ishwar Singh said the four did not use common car thief tools such as crowbars, rods, cutter or pliers. The four managed to get hold of this tool, which costs around ₹3 lakh. “The kit is used at service stations to analyse faults in the car computers and repair it accordingly. The kit reads the car’s computer system and detects the fault. They used the tool in reverse engineering and disabling the security features,” said Singh.

Singh said that the four men were arrested after a tip-off about their location in Hauz Khas on Friday morning. At around 3 am, police spotted the four in a Maruti 800 car and signalled them to stop the car. One of the men who had a country-made pistol fired at the police but was later overpowered.

Police recovered three country-made pistols and seven cartridges from them. The diagnostic tool seized had marking of ‘Made in England’. Additional DCP Chinmoy Biswal, said police are probing how they managed to get the kit.

“Apart from the diagnostic kit, they also carried a dongle and a chip. They opened the car’s bonnet and used the kit to disable the ECM. They then used the dongle and the car’s chip to bypass the security,” he said.