Police bust used car sale racket; three arrested, eight cars seized

The Mysuru district police have arrested three persons who allegedly defrauded buyers and sellers of used cars.

Briefing reporters on Thursday, Superintendent of Police Mallikarjun Baladandi said the police found the modus operandi employed by the accused to deceive the buyers and sellers of used cars when they were investigating a complaint lodged by C.S. Abhishek at the Bannur Police Station.

On March 18, the complainant alleged that one Ruman Sharief, who had befriended him as a used car dealer through a social media platform, offered to sell him luxury cars at low price.

Accordingly, Sharief, along with other co-accused Mujahid Pasha and Shahabuddin, all residents of Mysuru, handed over two cars to Abhishek after collecting ₹5.5 lakh from him, but failed to give him the vehicle documents.

The accused, who had sought time to hand over the documents, began avoiding the phone calls of Abhishek. When the complainant spotted the accused near Rangasamudra Gate in Bannur and questioned them about the documents of the cars sold to him.

After a quarrel between Abhishek and the three accused, the former lodged a complaint with the police, who arrested all the three- Ruman Sharief, 26, a fruit vendor residing in Ghousianagar in Mysuru, Mujahid Pasha, 37, a car dealer residing in Rajeev Nagar, and Shahabuddin, 25, a car mechanic residing in Lashkar Mohalla in Mysuru.

During interrogation, it was found that the accused would approach owners of luxury cars and would gain their trust by offering to purchase their cars at a good price. After the owners would agree, they would pay the owners a small amount as advance and take possession of the cars after offering to pay the remaining amount at the time of collecting the documents.

Meanwhile, after taking possession of the cars, the accused would sell the vehicles to other buyers, collect the money and promise to provide them the vehicle documents later when they collect the remainder of the money.

“However, the accused would neither pay the original owners nor provide the promised documents to the buyers, thereby cheating both the parties,” Mr. Baladandi said.

While investigation had revealed that the accused had sold several cars using the same modus operandi, the police had managed to recover a total of eight cars worth around ₹1.10 crore from the accused.

Mr. Baladandi said the police were yet to find the owners of the cars. Describing the owners of the cars also as victims, the Superintendent of Police did not rule out the possibility of the victims having already registered complaints against the accused. “We will have to check that,” he said.

The police suspect that there was a possibility of more such instances of cheating committed by the accused with other co-accused.

About the investigation into the robbery of eight kg of gold jewellery from a store in Hunsur, Mr. Baladandi said the police, which had already arrested a couple of accused, were pursuing leads to nab the remaining accused and to recover the stolen valuables.