Maruti WagonR Owner Sells His Car FOURTEEN Times - ARRESTED

The grand theft auto (no, not the video game) or vehicle theft as known in India is quite a common thing and we see several reports of stolen cars and bikes across the whole country regularly. With the advent of online resale sites like OLX and Quikr, cases of online frauds have been on the rise where it is reported that a party offer money for a vehicle and later comes to know that the seller has defrauded him. A recent story from Uttar Pradesh has come to light where the police have arrested a person who was selling the same car, a last-gen Maruti WagonR, multiple times to different customers using OLX, totaling FOURTEEN times. 

Manottam Tyagi, the perpetrator’s name, who also goes by the alias of Manu allegedly sold two cars to different unsuspecting customers at least 14 times. Manu sold a Maruti Swift Dzire and a Maruti Wagon R which belonged to his friend in this manner before he was apprehended. He would post an online ad on OLX with fake number plates on the car, when a buyer would inquire about the vehicle he would sell the car after some ritualistic negotiation (never go for sticker price people, just don’t).

Before handing over the vehicle, Manu’s usual modus operandi was to sneakily install a GPS tracker on the car, also he would only hand over one key for the car. After the car is sold, he would track the location of the car and retrieve it later using the spare key he had kept. He used this very trick to steal back his Wagon R in the middle of the night from a used car dealer’s house named Jeetu Yadav to whom he sold the vehicle for Rs 2.7 lakhs. 

His reign of consistently selling the same car repeatedly came to an end as the picture he has posted for the Wagon R on the internet was recognized by Jeetu Yadav’s friend Pradeep, himself a car dealer as well. He informed the police about the incident, and with his help of acting as an interested party for the vehicle, the authorities were able to successfully arrest Manu. During the interrogation, Manu admitted to his scam and the police were able to recover the Wagon R, Rs 10000 in cash, fake Pan and Aadhar cards, two mobile phones, and dodgy number plates from him. Manu was residing in the Tigri area of Greater Noida and was recently come out of jail in a fraud case and, in absolutely no shock to the readers, is also wanted in 7 further cases which include an attempt to murder as well.