12 luxury cars in connection with loan fraud case rot outside police station in Kurla

For over three-and-a-half years, 12 luxury cars seized by the Mumbai Police’s crime branch in connection with a loan fraud case have been rotting outside a building in Kurla West. The vehicles, including a Mahindra XUV300, an Audi Q5 and two Hyundai Cretas, were purchased illegally by obtaining bank loans using forged documentation. Police said no action has been taken despite multiple reminders to banks and companies that had financed the loans.

Of the 23 vehicles that were fraudulently purchased, 12 cars are worth around INR 7.8 crore. In January 2021, the Crime Branch busted an interstate racket, leading to the arrest of nine persons. Gangs in Bengaluru, Indore, Navi Mumbai and Mumbai were found to be the owners of the cars.

The police claimed that they quickly investigated the situation and filed the necessary papers with the court to avoid delaying the legal process for releasing the cars from impoundment, to ensure that the vehicles do not rot while in custody. Inspector Ghanshyam Nair of the criminal branch of the police stated that in such cases, they always quickly investigated and filed all necessary papers with the court so that cars could be handed over to their rightful owners as soon as possible and depreciation could be limited as much as possible.

Following a police notice, the three private banks that had financed 11 of the 23 cars — ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and HDFC Bank — immediately approached the Esplanade Metropolitan Magistrate Court and secured the release of the cars from police custody. Five of the 12 vehicles that remained were financed by a nationalised bank. The five were a Mahindra XUV300, two Hyundai Cretas, a Maruti Ciaz and an Audi Q5.

A police officer said that despite warnings, the branch manager did not even bother to check the vehicles.

There are still two Mercedes-Benzes outside the unit’s office that were financed by the company’s own finance department. It seems that they will soon have control of the two luxury cars as their police follow the case in court, the officer said.

The court even gave one of the unclaimed vehicles, a MINI Cooper, to one of the accused, Ramsajeevan Maurya. This happened when, despite repeated requests from the police, the Punjab National Bank branch in Vile Parle did not appear in court to contest his request to get the car back. According to a police officer from the investigating team, the court delayed giving the car to Maurya for about a month.

Dharambeer Sharma, 31; Mrigesh Navidhar, 42; Sainath Ganji, alias Sandeep Borate, 26; Pradeep Maurya, 46; Dilshaad Ansari, 44; Vijay Verma, 39; Salam Khan, 42; and Prasad Ravindra Mhadik, 24, were the other accused in the case.

The scam came to light when bank officials seized two vehicles belonging to 36-year-old Maujjam Mohammad Satvilkar from Kurla — a Maruti Suzuki XL6 Zeta and a Maruti Suzuki Ertiga — in November 2020.

Satvilkar tried to contact Dharambeer Sharma, the dealer from whom he bought the cars, but his phone was unreachable. Satvilkar was stunned to find that the cars were mortgaged to banks. He eventually went to the crime branch and a case was opened at Kurla police station in January 2021. The police contacted many banks during the investigation and zeroed in on 23 cars after questioning at least 100 people.

Dharambeer Sharma worked in HDFC Bank’s loans department for five years, police found. Waseem Shaikh gave Sharma his credentials to apply for a car loan before quitting his job in 2018, but he eventually changed his mind. Sharma then used Waseem’s credentials to get a loan from ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank in May 2020 to buy two cars — XL6 Zeta and Ertiga. In August 2020, he sold both the cars to Satvilkar for INR 9.85 lakh and stopped repaying the loan after that.

Gang got car loans by forging documents like income tax returns, bank statements, PAN cards, Aadhaar cards and other paperwork. They even rented an apartment for two to three months while other gang members would look for people who could pay cash by mortgaging the brand new cars, all under the name of loan verification. Under the guise of urgent needs like their sister’s marriage or a medical emergency in the family, the group borrowed money from private moneylenders, mostly businessmen, and mortgaged cars for about half the amount.

They assured their lenders that they would continue to repay the loans but they would only change mobile numbers to ensure that neither the bank nor the lenders could trace them after they had made two or three EMI payments.