The Amruthahalli police on Saturday arrested a 36-year-old man who had stolen an SUV from a city-based businessman on the pretext of buying it.
The accused kept a tab on an online platform where vehicles are put up for sale and contacted Ravindra Iluri through a stolen mobile phone with an offer to buy his car. The accused took the SUV on the pretext of taking it for a test drive on January 30 and did not return, the police said.
Based on a complaint, when the police tried to track down the accused through the mobile phone, they found that it was stolen phone and a complaint was filed with the Bagalur police.
A technical team had the only option of tracking the accused through the IP address. The police finally managed to zero in on M.G. Venkatesh Naik, who works a maintenance personnel at a residential apartment in the city. It was a herculean task as the police team got over 2,500 IP addresses. They had to check each one of them before tracking the accused to the apartment where he was working, the police said.
Detailed questioning led him to confess to the crime, the police said. Based on his confession, the police recovered the car and the mobile phone.
Investigations revealed that Venkatesh was involved in a house break-in and theft in 2011 and had used the stolen money to buy an SUV. The accused wanted his wife to contest the village panchayat election in Bagepalli and had sold his car to fund the election expenses . However, she lost the election and Venkatesh incurred huge loss.
From last year, he had been trying to steal a car similar to the one he had sold and chanced upon the ad on the portal.
Anoop A. Shetty, DCP, North-East division, appreciated the police team’s work for cracking the case.
