Delhi: Car thieves use technology to thwart cops

NEW DELHI: A former national-level judo athlete and an aspiring electrical engineer were arrested for stealing an SUV they had hired from a self-drive vehicle rental company. To avoid being detected, they removed the vehicle’s GPS locator and threw it into a truck sending police on a wild goose chase.
DCP (New Delhi) Madhur Verma said that the company officials lodged a complaint on May 18 that an XUV 500 booked in the name of Dushyant Chauhan had not been returned.Chauhan had booked the car by producing a copy of his driving licence. The GPS location of the car was in Mandi, Himachal Pradesh. However, when police reached there, they found the GPS locator in a truck.
“A team led by additional DCP Shobhit Saxena was formed to track down the accused. After scanning through CCTV footage of the area from where the car was booked, one of the accused men, Sahil Shokeen, was caught from Bahadurgarh,” said Verma.
On interrogation, Shokeen confessed to having stolen the car along with his friend, Sachin Parashar, a resident of Rohini. Parashar was soon arrested and the SUV recovered.
The duo told police they used to hire cars from the rental company on a regular basis and were aware of the lacunae. On May 16, they hired the SUV and removed the GPS near Sonipat. They also confessed to having stolen many luxury vehicles, including Ford Endeavour, Mercedes and Tata Hexa, with this modus operandi. They would modify the vehicles and sell them to bootleggers in Haryana.
Shokeen was a national-level judo player, but he damaged his foot after falling off a train while going to participate in the National Games in 2014. He was also preparing for the STET examination. Parasar is pursuing a diploma in electrical engineering from Sonipat.