Illegal business of vehicles unearthed in Punjab

With the arrest of two persons, the Punjab Police Saturday claimed to have unearthed an illegal operation of selling and purchasing second-hand vehicles which was being run in collusion with some officials of the state Transport Department.

Around 93 vehicles, running illegally in the state and valued at Rs 4 crore, have been seized by police, Senior Superintendent of Police (Ropar) Swapan Sharma said here.

Two persons involved in this illegal business have been arrested and fake Aadhaar cards have been recovered from them, he said.

Police suspected the car dealers based in Delhi, Hoshiarpur, Sangrur and Patiala could be involved in it.

Sharing the modus operandi of the illegal business, the SSP said the accused would purchase second-hand vehicles from a particular state and then sell them to car dealers of another state after changing their engine numbers.

"Many of the vehicles seized had pending loans against them in their states of origin," Sharma said, adding that several vehicles were found to have been registered on a single fake Aadhaar card.

The illegal operation came to light after police found a large batch of second-hand vehicles bought from Maharashtra at "throwaway" prices, he claimed.

Nearly 5,000 vehicles were picked up by car dealers of different states, and around 500 of them were sold in Punjab, he said.

The gang involved in this business would bypass all the government rules, procedures and get them registered as new vehicles with the complicity of clerks of transport offices of Fatehgarh Sahib, Tarantaran, Sangrur and Moga districts, the SSP claimed.

Sharma said initial investigations revealed that the accused were using certain "loopholes" in the centralised data created by the concerned department of the central government, as well as some "flaws" in 'Vahan 3' and 'Vahan 4' software, to their advantage.

Police said investigation into the matter was underway.