UP: One held for supplying stolen cars to Bishnoi gang

Lucknow, Jan 30 (IANS) Lucknow police have arrested a man who had supplied stolen vehicles to the infamous Lawrence Bishnoi gang. The police have also solved multiple cases of car thefts with this arrest.

Satendra Singh Shekhawat, 43, who hails from Jaipur in Rajasthan, was arrested in Lucknow. He was active in multiple states and mostly stole expensive cars.

Explaining his modus operandi, deputy commissioner of police (DCP-East) Ashish Srivastava said that Shekhawat frequented service centres from where he obtained details of cars such as their chassis and engine numbers—data that he would wrongly use to make their duplicate keys. However, he would not steal the targeted cars right away but would track them down by installing GPS trackers to their onboard diagnostic (OBD) ports.

The 43-year-old was presently targeting sports utility vehicles (SUVs) of a popular car maker in Lucknow, Patna and Raipur.

“During interrogation, Shekhawat confessed that he supplied the stolen cars to Lawrence Bishnoi,” the DCP said, adding that several cases of such thefts were reported in Maharashtra, Haryana, Telangana, Karnataka, Rajasthan and Gujarat.

Also, Shekhawat had been jailed in Telangana and Karnataka before, and was released from a prison only a year ago.

One SUV, 11 electronic keys and fake number plates were recovered from him, the police said.

Shekhawat also told police that he stole a black SUV in Darulshafa on November 22 last year and another white SUV of the same make from Telibagh five days later, the DCP said.

--IANS

amita/kvd