Car lies in dump as police scour city

Vishnuu00a0Khilnani (64), who had lodged a complaint with the Khar police in April after his car was stolen from Linking Road, was shocked to see two constables land at his doorstep after two months to tell him that it had been gathering dust at the traffic department's dumping yard in Bandra.

Traffic officials had reportedly found the car abandoned on Linking Road barely two days after the theft, but had allegedly taken it to the dumping yard instead of trying to trace its owner.


The car was taken to the traffic department's
dumping ground two days after the theft

Khar police officials claimed that after the complaint was lodged, they had given details of the vehicle to traffic chowkies at Bandra and Khar to check whether the vehicle was lying with them, but had received no response.

"When we received the complaint, we sent the car's details to the nearby chowkies and began investigations. It waxs only much later that we learnt that the traffic police had left the car in their dumping yard.
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Had we known this earlier, we wouldn't have wasted so much time looking for the car," said a police officer from Khar police station.

Khilnani said, "I was shocked when the constables came to my house and told me to claim my car.
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I thought the car might have been taken to some other city and had no hopes of getting it. Little did I know that it was lying just a few kilometers away from Khar police station, where I had lodged the complaint."

A BMC official from the Removal of Encroachment department said, "Our department doesn't check if the car is stolen or not.

If nobody claims the vehicles from the traffic department, we shift them to the BMC dumping ground, where the owner is sent a notice through the RTO. If there is no response, the vehicle is auctioned off."

The Other Side
"The traffic police cannot check whether every vehicle is towed or stolen. For that the Mumbai police should send us details of stolen vehicles," said a traffic police official.

"We had towed the car on April 30 and, when no one came to claim it, we took the details of the car from the RTO and sent a notice to the owner, asking him to come and claim the car" said Senior Police Inspector V L Hiremat of Bandra traffic police.

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