[TusharK]

Thanks to Vinil Arora for sharing this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wIBJNLPiLQ

I want to bring a incident happened early morning with us on 14 Nov 2017, till yet the car number is not identified we need your help in expediting the investigation.

My name is Rohit Mehra and I stay in Palava-Dombivli with my wife. We planned to see off our friend couple who were flying back to home town on Tuesday early morning. We stayed at their place on Monday night in Shiv Om towers, Nahar Amrit Shakti, Chandivali.

The terror broke on us early morning 4:00 AM with a news that our car in parking is on flames. Below are details of incident with timeline of what exactly happened. Please help us spread this incident on news for the sake of awareness and finding the culprits who did this.

03:38:00
An unknown SUV car enters the society (seems like Merc 4matic). Car stops near my car - CH 01 AV 3377. A guy comes out from rear seat, carrying some bottle in hand (presumably some flammable fluid). He bends down at my car's driver side wheel to spread that liquid. Meanwhile the SUV car turns back and takes position to exit society. The guys lit up by car in flame and runs to sit at rear of SUV. The car speeds out of society to escape.

04:00:00
The building guard notices the burning car nearby gas pipeline of society and runs to intimate us and other guards to extinguish the fire.

04:05:00
We (I, my wife and a friend) rushes down and see the flames coming underneath bonnet of car. The gas pipeline was inches away from these flames, which poses greater threat to whole society. The water being thrown on car didn't make any difference on putting the fire down. I asked security to bring in extinguishers. I and a guard opened up one DCP extinguisher in the flames from opposite ends. This controlled fire a little bit and we charged fire with more DCP from other extinguishers.

04:35:00
Fire was put to rest after half an hour of struggle. I was totally shattered inside, but gathered strength to call police and dialled 100.

05:05:00
Police arrives on location and investigates the scene. No one knows the real reason of fire as guards didn’t see the car entering and exiting the society. We are in impression that how can car short circuit or break in fire while in parking mode.

09:00:00
After intimating close ones or the incident and researching online for the possible causes, we finally got access to the CCTV footage of society.

09:30:00
Inspected the footage from 3:00 AM on wards and finally unveils the truth that someone has light up fire externally to the car. My wife broke in tears seeing this as we are outsiders and don't even live here. Why will someone do this to us..? What about the hundreds of life living in society..? How can this happen openly in Mumbai..? We are totally horrified and clueless what to do next. I was feeling numb. Decided to go to police station again with this new finding

10:30:00
In police station, we get to meet senior officer Mr. Avinash. He hears our grievance patiently and assigns two of his team members on this case. My FIR is done and investigation in progress.

12:00:00
By this time all CCTV footage of nearby shops has been checked. Nahar's CCTV footage check is pending and planned to be done by police in evening as office opens up

Police updating us in casual way we are investigating but till yet no strict action has been taken and car number has not been tracked up.It was big life threat for the people living in the society as there was gas pipeline just next to car where it was set on fire.

I'm open to any queries or questions, if I have missed some thing here. Also attaching car burning incident video and after incident car photographs.

Link for evidence video and pictures on Gdrive:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...xX?usp=sharing

Police Investigation : Currently CCTV footage of near by areas has been checked and footage of CI branch also checked, the incident took place early morning so finding it difficult to track the car number. Police trying to connect small small clue and saying cannot comment anything until they get all details

Thanks in advance for your help!

Rohit Mehra

[hrman]

Wow. That is scary. Not heard of this new form of vandalism ever.
But someone has the guts to enter the society, target the particular car, set it on fire and drive away casually. Mindboggling.

Hope the police are able to track the culprits at the earliest. Prima facie, I suspect some enimity or misunderstanding(targetting some one else's car and burning the victims car by mistake)

[octane1002]

At the cost of quoting the obvious (too obvious too miss out)..Victim's car is from another state.

I daresay a not so popular belt with localites here, CH being the Northern part of India. Not saying that this could be the only reason, but it could be that by reason of his car being a new entrant in the society (and it being CH regd didnt help matters), it was targetted.

Could it be that victim was occupying someone else's parking space in the society(not a reserved one, but could be that the other car that came could be parking there since the past and the occupants were pissed at the new car being parked there)?

[rohiT Nonu]

Just putting forward a question that popped up in my mind.

Did the car owner had any Road Rage with any person in that SUV or any other car while driving down to his friend's place and parked the car there in the parking?

I mean it can be a possible case. There are some people who make a small road rage revenge as their Life Ambition and go on a killing/destroying frenzy.

[ALTIMAed]

What really surprises me is that 'an unknown SUV enters the society' where there are security guards.

Normally, in societies having security guards, any 'non society' vehicle is not allowed (specially keeping the odd hour of entry in mind) to enter unless the guard ascertains which flat the person wants to go to and lets the vehicle in only after confirming with the said flat occupants. Apart from this, the vehicle number is also noted down.

Pretty sad to know about this incident, as it could actually happen to any one of us. Scared, specially for those who park their vehicles on the road side in front of their homes.

[itwasntme]

This is a targeted attack for whatever reason, and had the potential to turn into a catastrophic fire given the close proximity of the piped gas network (!) plus so many bikes and cars nearby.

Please send the video to social media influencers and digital media outlets. Chances are these wealthy jerks have done it earlier given the totally casual way they carried it out.

EDIT: Just noted ToI has picked it up: http://www.timesnownews.com/india/vi...rashtra/127781

In my opinion, even if you were a visitor, the Society needs to respond:
1.How and why did the guards not stop this huge SUV at the gate at 0330, and identify the occupants? Seems very fishy to me.
2. Usually all gates will have a CCTV camera recording the vehicle number. Where is that footage?
3. What are the office bearers saying? Do they realise that the entire area could have turned into a death zone if the gas pipeline had caught fire?

[GTO]

Definitely some sort of enmity here. Sucks, but that's what we have insurance for.

The fact that it's not a common SUV should make it easy to nail the miscreants, if the police is determined that is. Bring up a list of all white cars, then check the cellphone records (for location) of the owners & family members.

The Vento's owner should also think hard about who in his circle (or that of his friends) owns such a car.

[arun_josie]

Originally Posted by hrman

Wow. That is scary. Not heard of this new form of vandalism ever.

This happened some time back in Delhi. SUV(Fortuner) set on fire due to some road rage incident,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC7yGINvQqA

http://www.hindustantimes.com/delhi-...eZx3VVCFI.html

[ghodlur]

That is really scary. Surely this is personal vendetta I guess. What SUV is that, seems like a high end one? What happened to the car next to the victim's car, was it damaged too? It was quick thinking on the part of the security and the victim to quickly douse the fire else the results could have been catastrophic considering the gas lines nearby. I hope the SUV details are known fast from the CCTV footage and the criminal minded people involved are caught at the earliest.

My sympathies goes to the victim. Hope they get over it quickly and also hope the Insurance guys help them out with the claim without any meddling issues.

Have forwarded the link to my office colleagues who stay in the said complex.

[selfdrive]

Could it be a case of mistaken identity in terms of the car? It is odd though, as the guy seemed to go specifically for that car only. Was it due to ease of access/ possibility to reverse? Please check with your hosts too if they had/ have any road rage incidents.

When the car is backing up (around the 48 second mark of the video), the rear portion is visible but the number is not legible due to glare/ reflection. However, it seems there is some sticker on the rear bumper with something written on it. Maybe it helps to look out for this car

Originally Posted by ghodlur

That is really scary. Surely this is personal vendetta I guess. What SUV is that, seems like a high end one?

Looks like a Merc GL class. Fellow bhpians can confirm/ correct please

Edit: are the society gates not closed during the night? Some sort of barricade would act as a deterrent to vandalism.

[abirnale]

I can think of only three possibilities -
1. Road rage involving victim earlier in the day (something that was super mild or higher that victim did not disclose)
2. Pure Mistaken identity
3. Old enemy tracing to the unknown area for revenge

No other angles of enmity I think.

By the way, the gas pipelines wont have auto-shutoff valves at many places? I mean even the home gas cylinders can be fitted with auto shut-off valves that avoid the issues of leakages and fire thereafter. May be this is a modern thing but it makes me think - if the risk was so high, there could not have been open gas pipelines allowed for whatever reasons???

[ghodlur]

Originally Posted by abirnale

By the way, the gas pipelines wont have auto-shutoff valves at many places?
May be this is a modern thing but it makes me think - if the risk was so high, there could not have been open gas pipelines allowed for whatever reasons???

Generally there are no valves in the gas pipelines for the society except one at the entry, even this valve is generally not easily accessible. By default in every society car parking should not be near gas pipelines, that's the condition generally laid out by MGL in Mumbai. Pipelines to the individual flats are laid out preferably in ducts or along the building walls where they are not easily accessible to kids and others.

In any case, the risk with gas pipelines is not pressure but volume. Even if there had been a massive hit to pipelines, there would be no pressure release but significant volumes can be deadly.

[hserus]

Also they had a narrow escape pouring water on a burning car .. that’s a petrol fire and oil would float on water, the fire would spread more if you do that!! Lucky they quickly caught on and brought chemical extinguishers.

[Vinil27]

Hi All

Vinil here, this is my first post here and never wanted it to be in a situation like this though. Have been a dormant user but a very avid follower of the forum.

Just to update, this is my cousin's Vento.
He was staying at his friends place that night.
He was not involved in any road rage incident even before this incident and neither does he meeting someone with his built ( I am taking the guy who burnt the car for reference here ).
From the prima fascia , it looks like the case of mistaken identity only.

As on date, he is yet to identify the Mercedes ML guy. None of the camera's in the area managed to get a clear shot of his number plate.

Would be great if people here can suggest us with some inputs on trying to get hold of the culprit.

[blackwasp]

Sad to see this happen. I'm shocked how casually these people drive in. In my society, incase I reach home late (post 12.30am), the main gates are locked shut. I have to walk inside, find a watchman who has the key (they patrol inside the society) and request him to open up the gate. The gate is very creaky and loud.

Recently, we had CCTVs installed in the society. One of them directly points at the entrance and captures the front plates of cars coming in and rear plates of the vehicles exiting.

One more reason I could think of - this could have been used to create a distraction for some other crime.

Like GTO mentioned, if the cops want to trace a car, they will do it. Mumbai has a lot of CCTVs on the roads whose feed can be analysed 3 hr before and after the event for clues. Additionally, the car is a rare/unique one. Should be easy to simply check RTO records for all possible light coloured Mercedes SUVs registered in nearby RTOs and cross referencing them with the e-challan system for matches. e.g. - to rule out the ones that were in other locations at the time of the crime.