Mangaluru: A twisted loan racket was busted by Barke Police when they found chassis and engine number tampering machines in the back of a truck during a routine vehicle check. The tampering equipment was used by the culprits to completely change the truck’s engine and chassis number to avail loans on it.
The racket was foiled by the police when personnel of Barke Police Station were performing a brief checking on the truck outside a warehouse early on Tuesday, November 29 morning. After finding the tampering machine in the truck, they took the people in the truck for interrogation in Barke station. Upon questioning, Police found this machine to be capable of changing the truck’s engine and chassis number, getting fake documents from the RTO and then availing loans each time they change the numbers from different banks.
The first loans on these trucks were availed from Mangalorean branches of two banks. The second loans after tampering however were availed by the culprits from Milagres Credit Co-operative Limited.
The accused, Anil Kiran Noronha, Sudheer, Abdul Jabbar, Melvyn Noronha and Valerian D’Souza are involved in this criminal business. They had a total loan amount of Rs. 93,94,020 by changing engine and chassis numbers on four trucks with five different loans on them. The vital documents required for the loans were faked by the culprits in the RTO. They were using Registration Certificate (RC) books and not smart RC cards.
Commissioner of Police, Chandra Sekhar addressed the members of the media at his office on Tuesday and said that this racket was foiled by Barke Police station and rewarded the investigating team with Rs. 10,000 cash reward and appreciation letters.
Chandra Sekhar also said that there will be further investigation into the matter at the RTO and banks which provided loans since three more accused are not in police net yet. “A series of investigations conducted by the police have yielded more details on the tampering tools and how the RC was tampered as well. Co-operation of banks in this case is highly appreciable”, he added.
