UP court orders FIR against RTO

Lucknow : In a one-of-a-kind incident, a local court has directed the police to lodge an FIR against unidentified employees of the regional transport office (RTO) in Lucknow for allegedly “stealing the identity” of an SUV. The orders have come on the complaint of a scrap dealer.

According to the complainant, Junaid Siddiqui of Gudamba, Delhi Police raided his workshop in Khurramnagar under Indira Nagar police station in March 2021 and seized an SUV which he had bought in a scrap deal. He said the police claimed that it was a stolen vehicle.

Siddiqui said that he personally knew the first owner of the vehicle who sold the SUV after it got damaged in an accident. Later, Siddiqui got the vehicle repaired.

He alleged that after Delhi cops seized the vehicle, he inquired through his own sources and came to know that the details of his car (registration, chassis and engine numbers) were used to change the identity of another car of the same model which was stolen in Delhi some time ago.

“The identity of my car was illegally given by some RTO officials/staff to people who stole the car in Delhi,” Siddiqui alleged.

The complainant said that he made several rounds of the Indira Nagar police station and sent several letters by post to the office of the Lucknow police commissioner but no action was taken. “I was compelled to move the court to seek relief,” he said.

Siddiqui said that he used to buy cars damaged in accidents at cheaper rate, got them repaired and resold for profit.

The car originally belonged to Alok Kumar Agarwal of Vibhuti Khand in Gomti Nagar. He sold the SUV to a company after it got badly damaged in an accident. The company later held an auction in which the vehicle was bought by one Abdul Rizwan. The car was resold a couple of times thereafter and finally it was bought by Siddiqui for around Rs 6.5 lakh.

“After cops took my vehicle, I checked the details with the RTO and found that another car of the same registration number was in the name of one Ramadhin Gupta. However, the documents mentioned two different addresses. When I went to these addresses, none of them were correct,” he said.

Siddiqui claimed that he suspected that a fraud was committed by car thieves in connivance with RTO employees.

SHO, Indira Nagar, S.K. Tiwari said that an FIR was lodged under sections 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery), and 471 (dishonestly using a document) of the IPC and a probe was underway.