KOCHI: The motor vehicles department (MVD) which is carrying out an inquiry into the luxury cars owned by Monson Mavunkal suspect that most of these vehicles have fake registration number plates of other states. The department is tracing chassis and engine numbers of the vehicles parked at Monson’s house at Kaloor in Kochi.
Department officials said they had tried to get the details of the cars through the Parivahan website, but the details of the majority of the vehicles were not available. One car was registered in the name of Monson with the Kerala registration number.
“We suspect that these cars with Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, New Delhi and Haryana number plates have fake registration numbers. Hence, to trace the authentic registration details, we are collecting the chassis and engine numbers of them. We could not access some cars as keys could not be found,” an official said.
The officials said apart from a few cars, the others are models of 1990s and 2000s which are available for cheap prices in other states. “Maybe as these vehicles were very old, details might not be recorded on Parivahan. Most of the cars are likely to be imported some 20 years back,” an official said.
The registration of the Dodge Grand which was mostly used by Monson in Kochi had expired in 2019. The insurance renewal of the same car with a Haryana number plate has not been done for several years. No details are available of his Lexus, Range Rover and Toyota Estima vehicles. A sports car, DC Avanti, was not granted registration but used with a Maharastra number plate here.
“Monson used a Ferrari logo in front of DC Avanti to claim it as the imported Italian sports car. Similarly, there is also a car that looks like Porsche but it actually is an altered Mitsubishi Cedia. There is a Mercedes Benz E class manufactured in the 1990s altered to look like a limousine. One Toyota Estima was converted into a kennel for dogs of the costly breed,” an official said. The department also checked the several luxury vehicles parked at Monson’s house in Cherthala.
Report on antiques next week
Kochi: Officials of the Archeological Survey of India and state department of archeology, who are examining the ‘antique’ articles at Monson Mavunkal’s house in Kochi, will submit a report to the Crime Branch regarding the items’ authenticity by next week. As per the preliminary assessment, a majority of articles at the private museum of Monson are fake. However, there are a few articles that are 50-100 years old.