Team-BHP - 151 cars with banned BS4 engines seized in Mumbai

The accused bought cars with BS4 engines and change the number plates and chassis number.

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Navi Mumbai police on Wednesday claimed to have busted a pan-India racket with the arrest of nine persons, who were involved in the illegal sale of cars with BS4 engines.

Talking to reporters, Navi Mumbai Police Commissioner Bipin Kumar Singh said a team of the crime branch seized 151 cars worth ₹7.15 crore from the accused.

"The gang operated pan-India. The gang members used to purchase cars with BS4 engines and change the number plates and chassis number. They would then get the registration of these vehicles done using forged documents and sell them in other states saying that they were damaged in floods," he said.

The prime accused in the case had set up their office and godown at Shirdhon near Panvel in Raigad district, he said.

A machine procured from Hyderabad to generate new chassis numbers for the cars was recovered from accused Chopda," he said.

An offence under various IPC sections, including 420 (cheating) and 465 (forgery), was registered against the accused at Panvel city police station, the commissioner said.

The police seized cars from different districts of Maharashtra and from other states- Delhi, Haryana, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Telangana, Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, and Punjab, where the gang members sold the cars at cheap rates, he said.

Source

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The gang operated pan-India. The gang members used to purchase cars with BS4 engines and change the number plates and chassis number.

Sorry, can't understand why would anyone purchase (meaning legal activities) a car with number plate (means already registered) & then forge duplicate documents for re-registration as new & then sell it in used market after claiming it's flood damage (meaning extremely low value).

Is this article generated by some A.I. bot?

Well, if like people say, they purchased new and unsold BS4 cars, this means they were purchased either from authorised dealers or the manufacturers themselves.

Would they then not be held equally culpable of the same crime?

There only seems to be mention of the buyers and nothing about where and how they managed to buy these cars in the first place.

Cheers

I am as confused as some of the members above.

Can someone please explain how is this scam actually done? The article is written so vaguely, but such scams should be very well explained so that used car buyers dont get themselves in trouble falling for "new year bonanza deal" often publicized by used car dealers.

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Originally Posted by Turbanator (Post 5014825)

I think they had bought new unregistered cars- BS4, which may have got struck because of SC ruling & than possibly got scrap accidental vehicles of similar make/ model and used chassis/ registration number on such non-registered cars.

Thats what it seems like. This is from Cartoq:
This is one of the biggest seizures of cars in terms of volume and value in India. Many of these vehicles were unregistered and were brand-new. The unsold cars were auctioned by the auto manufacturers to the highest bidders to scrap them. However, the owner of the company who bought them sold them to another company owned by one of the members in the gang. The cops also say that the gang was successful in selling a few cars too. They police team is currently investigating the matter and are trying to trace the sold cars.

No surprises. Umpteen number of used car dealerships do the worst kind of scams to cheat unsuspecting & innocent customers especially in cities like Bengaluru where most people are soft targets . Worse still, they do it as an organised group and when caught they pressurise the police & the buyer through the community leaders, to get away.

It's not simply that we call them the "used car mafia". This genuinely is not even the tip of the iceberg.

We often ask for fair consumer laws against carmakers selling a tiny percentage of lemons, whereas we need serious regulation in this market where odometers, chassis numbers, engine number of cars are regularly (& often with brazen openness) tampered.

The modus operandi was as follows. ( It is reported in Loksatta)

1) MUL sold unsold BS4 vehicles as scrap after removing and destroying the chassis numbers.

2) The gang that purchased these involved a cleark from the company who managed to get the numbers and helped prepare documents.

3) An expert tin worker fabricated the numbers and welded them in place. The work was very good quality, and difficult to identify as non genuine.

4) The vehicles were sold all over India. Right now 15 seized cars are standing in Delhi. They may be destroyed their as transportation to Navi Mumbai is costly. The police have incurred a huge expense.already to transport the other cars to Navi Mumbai.

Regards,

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Originally Posted by Anwesh (Post 5015424)

The modus operandi was as follows. ( It is reported in Loksatta)

2) The gang that purchased these involved a cleark from the company who managed to get the numbers and helped prepare documents.

And I believe some of the alternate registration and chassis numbers were lifted off flood damaged vehicles so the RTO work might not have been that much assuming they were sold on a 'notional' discount for the same. Or sold off to unsuspecting buyers who saw these as almost brand new BS6 (used) vehicles without considering if the number plates were linked to flood damaged vehicles.

What a waste of time, materials and perfectly good cars! Our government officials live in ivory towers. After wasting a huge amount of the tax payer's money they've only compounded the problem(s). The vast gap between reality and the ruling class' imaginations leads to such wholly avoidable situations. What we really need is a law to scrap our outdated civil services.

There is a glaring gap when insurance companies dispose of accident vehicles. If the car cannot be safely repaired or unfit for use, it needs to be destroyed and deregistered. This does not happen. Instead, the dealer and insurers form a nexus to

1: Repair the car - dealer wins in repair/replacement cost and pays the surveyor aa consideration

2: Sell the salvaged car without de-registration. Papers get misused as in this article