Mumbai: The Thane Police Crime Branch has arrested three persons for allegedly cheating scores of people into handing over their cars, by telling them a five-star hotel in Mumbai would hire the vehicles to ferry guests. The police have recovered 41 cars from the accused and more are expected to be recovered, said officials.
The lid was blown off the racket when Shrikant Rai (33), a resident of the Manorama Nagar area in Thane, approached the Chitalsar police alleging that the three men, Rohit Gharat, Anurag Tiwari and Rajendra Yadav, had taken his car in February, promising to get it hired by the Grand Hyatt in Santacruz.
“The trio told him that the hotel regularly needed four-wheelers in large numbers to ferry guests to and from the hotel, and that he would get ₹1.5 lakh per month if he leased his car. Apart from his car, the accused also took ₹15,000 from him as ‘deposit’. Mr Rai agreed, but when there was no further word from the three, he made enquiries in his friend circle and found that other people had been similarly cheated by the them,” said an officer from the Thane Police Crime Branch.
Mr. Rai then approached the police on Thursday morning, and an FIR was registered against the three men, after which the police picked up all three of them from their residences.
“We questioned them and based on the results of the questioning, recovered 41 cars of various makes from multiple locations in Diva, Khardi and Dombivali. The accused had parked the cars in locations far away from the residences of the people they had cheated,” said Police Inspector Ravindra Doifode, Thane Crime Branch.
Inquiries till now have revealed that the accused relied on word-of-mouth publicity for the scam, and have been active for at least three to four months. They would offer to get their victims a commission if they enlisted their friends or relatives to lease their cars to the hotel, and the promise of recovering the entire cost of the car within a year proved to be a strong factor for victims to hand over their vehicles.
“We have even found some victims who obtained loans and bought cars so that they could provide them to the trio after being taken in by their spiel. We are still working on finding out what they planned to do with the cars,” Mr. Doifode added.
As the police have received information about 50 to 60 people having been cheated but have recovered only 41 cars, they suspect that some of the cars have already been sold off.
They are interrogating the accused to find out if this is the case.
