Pramesh S Jain
The Adugodi Police have busted a racket involved in forging Registration Certificate (RC) documents of luxury cars and selling the vehicles using fake identities.
Four persons have been arrested and eight cars worth Rs.1.74 crore have been seized.
The arrested have been identified as Prabhakar(43) of SBI Colony,Yeshwanthpur,Venugopal alias Raghavendra (36)of Ramanagara,Prashanth (30)of KR Puram and Bagesh (28)of Hulimavu,Bengaluru City Police Commissioner Seemant Kumar Singh said at a press conference.
Complaint led to investigation:
The case came to light after a resident of Electronic City lodged a complaint with Adugodi Police alleging that he had handed over his Ford EcoSport to a person who promised to clear the outstanding vehicle loan before purchasing it.
However, the accused neither repaid the loan nor returned the vehicle,prompting the owner to approach the police.
During the investigation,police gathered technical and intelligence inputs and arrested the first accused from SBI Colony in Yeshwanthpur on July 16.
His interrogation led to the arrest of another accused near Ramanagara,followed by the arrest of two more associates on July 17.
According to police,the accused targeted owners of luxury cars by offering to purchase vehicles with pending loans.
After taking possession of the cars,they allegedly forged RC documents,altered vehicle registration numbers and number plates,and changed ownership details to create fake identities for the vehicles.
The gang then posed as the genuine owners and sold the vehicles to unsuspecting buyers using the forged documents.
Based on information provided by the accused,police recovered eight cars worth Rs.1.74 crore between July 17 and July 23.
Of the eight vehicles seized,police have so far identified the rightful owners of two cars,while efforts are underway to trace the owners of the remaining six vehicles and identify other members of the racket.
