POLICE END VEHICLE LIFTERS’ ‘LUXURY RUN’

Nine members arrested, eight stolen vehicles recovered from them

With the arrest of nine people and recovery of eight stolen four-wheelers, the UP Special Task Force (STF) on Thursday claimed to have busted a hi-tech gang of vehicle lifters involved in stealing over 100 luxury vehicles from the city in the past five years. Gang leader Rajiv Sharma and his close aide Sujan Singh Meena alias ‘Gutaya’ were arrested in Gomti Nagar on Thursday night while seven other key members of the gang were arrested from Ferozabad and Etawah.

With the arrest of nine people and recovery of eight stolen four-wheelers, the UP Special Task Force (STF) on Thursday claimed to have busted a high-tech gang of vehicle lifters involved in stealing over 100 luxury vehicles from the city in the past five years.

Gang leader Rajiv Sharma and his close aide Sujan Singh Meena alias ‘Gutaya’ were arrested in Gomti Nagar on Thursday night while seven other key members of the gang were arrested from Ferozabad and Etawah.

The gang was led by Rajiv Sharma and his wife Neha who hail from Agra. They had constructed a sprawling house in Saraswatipuram locality of Jankipuram and procured huge wealth through this vehicle-lifting business. Rajiv had even changed his identity several times in the past to evade arrests. He was also known as Raju Goli, Rajiv Goswami, Rahul Pandey, Ravi Tiwari and Bantar.

“The gang members have expertise in stealing four-wheelers by breaking automatic-synchronised locks. They mainly focus on stealing high-end models of vehicles, as it provides them good resale value,” said Arvind Chaturvedi, ASP, STF.

He said the police was tracking the movement of gang leader Raju Goli for the past several months. “He was picked up and arrested multiple times in the past but used to get legal benefit in the absence of recovery of stolen vehicles from him. So we are trying catch him red handed this time and found him moving in a stolen SUV in Gomti Nagar on Thursday. His close aide Sujan Singh, who is an expert in breaking synchronised locks was also arrested along with him,” said Chaturvedi.

The ASP said the other key gang members were identified as four Etawah residents – Subodh Kumar Yadav, Rambaran Singh, Sarvesh Yadav and Neeraj Nishad, a Delhi resident Jitendra Gupta alias Jeetu, Nandlal alias Nandu of Gautambudh Nagar, and Mohd Iqbal of Ferozabad. Of them, Iqbal is expert in changing the stolen vehicles’ engine and chassis number and reselling them. Many times the gang also used to hire experts of different automobile companies in replacing their synchronised locks.

Chaturvedi said the gang members used to purchase ‘total loss’ vehicles from scrap dealers of Lucknow, Kanpur, Meerut, Ghaziabad and Moradabad. They then replaced the engine and chassis numbers of these vehicles with that of stolen vehicles and used the registration papers of the ‘total loss’ vehicles as the papers of the stolen vehicles, he added.

He said the gang mostly targeted vehicles parked on roadsides outside hotels and malls. These vehicles were sold in different cities through the gang’s local links.

The ASP said in the past three months eight stolen vehicles were recovered from different parts of the state capital. These included five SUVs and three sedans.