Mastermind held for reselling rental cars to drug traffickers

Jaipur: City police Sunday arrested a 23-year-old alleged mastermind of a gang from Alwar jail. The gang rented high-end self-drive cars using fake identities and resold them to drug traffickers across Rajasthan.

DCP (West) Amit Kumar said that the accused was identified as Jayant Kumar. Already lodged in Alwar Jail in connection with another case, he was brought to Jaipur on a production warrant by the Kardhani police station. Kumar said that the accused is a resident of Behror and has six previous criminal cases registered against him in Behror and Jhunjhunu districts. Investigations revealed that the accused orchestrated the operation from behind bars, directing gang members to rent expensive cars using forged ID documents, disable the GPS trackers, and sell the vehicles to narcotics smugglers.

The case came to light after a local complainant, Rahul Saini, reported the theft of a Scorpio vehicle on March 9 at Kardhani police station. Police traced the gang after analysing CCTV footage and receiving inputs from informants.

Subsequently, a police team arrested five gang members—Manish Yadav, Ramlal, Anshu Singh, Karmveer Singh alias Monu, and Vijay Kumar Sharma alias Motya. Their interrogation led to the revelation that Jayant Kumar was running the racket from jail and collecting the proceeds through intermediaries.

"The accused used to instruct the gang on which cars to target, how to disable tracking systems, and whom to contact for selling the vehicles. The proceeds were sent to him while he was still in jail," said Kumar.