Gang of autolifters busted, 4 held

New Delhi: The Delhi police has busted a gang of autolifter with the arrest of four of its active members and recovered 13 luxury cars from them on Tuesday.

They were using high-tech devices to defunct engine control module (ECM) of the vehicles. An ECM is considered the brain of a car — an electronic control unit that manages a series of actuators.

The arrested persons have been identified as Aamir, Safruddin, Sageer and Shoib Khan, all are the residents of various districts in Western UP. They confessed to their involvement in around 300 cars thefts reported in Delhi-NCR. They were active members of inter-state gangster Sagir, alias Sata‘s gang.

According to the police, acting a on tip off, a trap was laid near Meerabai Polytechnic College in New Friends Colony area where the autolifters were to come for the delivery of a stolen Hyundai Verna car at 5 am. Based on the tip-off, the said car was intercepted and four autolifters were overpowered. On verification, the Verna car they were driving was found to be stolen from Rohini area a few days back.

“Each of the accused is an expert in stealing cars of different brands. Aamir, for instance, is an expert in stealing Toyoto and Maruti cars,” said a senior police official.

During the interrogation, they told that one member of the gang used to select the potential targets (cars) in the day time, clicks photographs and pass it on to gang leader Sagir using WhatsApp. Further, Sagir used to send the photos of the cars to various members who had expertise in that brand.

“They have purchased gadgets to ‘bypass’ ECM, laptop, GPS locator and key programmer from various e-commerce website. Like they have purchased the e-programmer for Rs 1 lakh from Amazon. The accused persons also used Youtube to learn new techniques for stealing newly-launched luxury cars and also used online shopping portals to purchase chips, duplicate keys, ECM, etc.,” said Romil Baaniya, DCP (southeast).