...Not At All, Say Hi-tech Thieves
NEW DELHI: Move over the car thief who spent money earned from the crime on liquors and gambling. The new crop now spends money on good life and girlfriend, and invests in properties in Noida and Gurgaon. Yes, the profile of Delhi’s car thief has changed. He is young, upwardly mobile and tech-enabled. Usually from small towns in and around the National Capital Region, he comes with an aspirational bent of mind. He is addicted to easy money, luxury and night clubs. Wearing stylish clothes and carrying high-end smart phones, he romances girlfriends and spends huge money on them. “They know new technologies used by car makers. In fact, some of them are from ITIs and computer background. Some gangs even hire computer professionals,” said Special Commissioner of Police SBK Singh.
Manoj Bakkarwala, a known car lifter of north India, is their role model. He has committed over 1,200 thefts and strangely his name never figured in many of them. Bakkarwala led a lavish lifestyle and is in relationship with a girl in Haryana who is doing MBA, and he bore all her expenses before he landed in the police net two years ago.
Last month, Delhi Police nabbed Robin and, during interrogation, he said, he wanted to become like Bakkarwala. Robin loves to travel in high-end cars, flaunt girlfriends and frequents five-star hotels.
In South Delhi, Anil Chuhan, Dharmendar and Aftab are most wanted. Most of them are from small towns in UP and Haryana. Most serviced high-end cars before entering the world of crime. This month, police arrested Hafiz Zakir Hussain, a dental college student in Bareilly in UP, who is involved in six cases. His love for high life style led him into crime.
Car thieves have also become bolder, carrying sophisticated weapons, and shoot and flee when caught. In Delhi, auto theft is a routine affair. Every day around 104 cases are reported. The number of cases indicate that police have turned a blind eye to the problem.
If your vehicle is stolen, forget its recovery. Just log on to Delhi Police website and file an e-FIR. In next 24 hours, the investigator of your case will contact you for details and will half-heartedly visit the place of theft, ironically when all the forensic evidences are destroyed. In six months, untraceable report will be given to you for the insurance money. Till July 31, 22,255 cases of auto thefts were reported and less than 1,000 stolen vehicles were recovered. Last year, 32,797 cases were reported and the police could only find 1,797 vehicles. In 2014, the police managed to recover 2,425 stolen vehicles of a total of 23,411 cases. In 2013, 14,936 theft cases were reported and only 2,007 cases were worked out.
The auto lifters are way ahead of police investigators. Gone are the days when master keys and duplicate keys were used to steal cars. High-end cars, from BMW to Mercedes, are the most sought-after vehicle. Thousands of keyless BMW, Audi and Mercedes have been stolen. As technology evolves to make cars safer by installing anti-theft technologies—engine immobilisers and chip-implanted keys—thieves are also updating their techniques to steal cars. “The criminals are using a device that neutralises the signal used in keyless entry fobs to get inside a car without force,” a senior officer said.
Police are dealing with two types of car thefts in Delhi—ordinary car theft and car hacking. “It is most worrying to see thieves use a hand-held electronic device to exploit a glitch in the keyless ignition systems used in most top-end vehicles,” the officer added. The car thieves can buy a blank key fob and a hand-held box that plugs into a socket linked to the computer. The hand-held box tells the computer to re-programme the blank fob with a new code. It takes only a few seconds to create a fob that can be used in the car again and again. “These boxes are available in markets so that garages and locksmiths could create replacement fobs for owners whose own sets had been lost or stolen,” he said.
Some car thieves place magnetic data reader at the doors’ lock system and later extract data at car markets and make duplicate keys and steal the vehicles later. “Some criminals carry a laptop along with them, crack the security code through the help of magnetic data reader, make key in few minutes to enter the car and then dismantle the GPS and ignition system,” the officer said.
“Thieves slide a thin iron rod hanger inside a door window, hook it onto the door’s locking mechanism and pull upwards, opening the door. Once inside the car, it is relatively simple to hot wire the engine by ripping out wires from underneath the dashboard and touching them together to bypass the ignition key,” he said. After thefts, the vehicles are parked at different parking lots to evade suspicion. They use fake number plates and show fake registration certificates and transport the vehicles elsewhere. A auto lifter, Rehan, 23, arrested last month along with a stolen Honda City, disclosed to have committed many thefts. His gang used to conduct recce of the area during the day to identify the old vehicles to commit auto thefts. A large number of junk dealers, based in Ferozabad and Meerut, are specialised in changing the engine and chassis numbers of the stolen vehicles.
Special Commissioner Singh said, “Several measures such as preventive strategies have been devised with the help of Resident Welfare Associations. They are encouraged to keep night guards and install traditional anti-theft devices such as gear and steering lock.” He said checks on junk dealers and kabaris have been intensified and anti-auto theft squads are being revived. “Thefts of vehicles are analysedand accordingly patrolling and picketing strategies are devised,” he said.