Inter-state vehicle lifter gang busted; 5 held

With the arrest of five persons, including a woman, police today claimed to have busted an inter-state gang of vehicle lifters.
The five accused - Shweta Gupta, Manoj Kumar, Dinesh Kumar Pandey, Gulshan Kumar and Ramu - all of them residents of Kanpur have been arrested by a joint team of Crime Branch and Jhusi police station area on the outskirts of the city, Senior Superintendent of Police V P Srivastava said.
Shweta was arrested from Jhusi on Saturday night while other accomplices were arrested from Kanpur yesterday, based on the information she gave to police.
"Shweta confessed that after initially working with local dealers for some renowned automobile brands, she started her own business of repair and resale of vehicles damaged in accidents and sold in scrap," the SSP said.

She later got in touch with some persons involved in small-time vehicle theft from whom she would procure stolen cars, replace their number-plates, engine and chassis numbers with those of scrap vehicles at her disposal and sell these in second-hand vehicle markets of Lucknow, Kanpur and Unnao, he added.
"On the basis of the information that we obtained from Shweta, raids were conducted at the gang's hide-outs in Kanpur from where three stolen SUVs, a sedan and a small car were recovered," he said.
A number of scrap vehicles and tools, used assembling vehicle parts were also found there, he said.

Her interrogation led to the arrest of the four accomplices but six others named by her are absconding, he added.