Mumbai Police book car designer Dilip Chhabria under multiple sections

Mumbai Police arrested the popular car designer – Dilip Chhabria on Monday. Booked under various sections, noted car designer Dilip Chhabria has been slapped with multiple charges by the Mumbai police. With the arrest, Mumbai Police claims to have unearthed an interstate car financing and forgery scam worth nearly Rs. 100 crore.

The team of police produced Dilip Chhabria before the Esplanade Metropolitan Magistrate and got his custody till January 2nd. The Mumbai Police has alleged that Dilip Chhabria’s firm – Dilip Chhabria Designs Pvt Ltd (DCDPL), manufactured 127 units of the Avanti cars in last three years and committed acts of forgery while selling these vehicles. About 90 units of these manufactured cars were allegedly sold using fraudulent financing by taking loans from non-banking financing companies (NBFC).

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Explaining the finance scam, Assistant Police inspector Sachin Vaze said that Chhabria posed as a customer of the Avanti cars and applied for multiple loans on each vehicle from various NBFCs. He allegedly took loans averaging 42 lakh per car. After the approval of the loan, the Avanti used to get registered in another state before selling them to a third party. NBFCs declared many of these loans as Non Performing Assets or NPAs. Investigations are said to shown that Chhabria had hypothecated 41 cars with BMW India Financing Services and 16 cars were never registered with any RTO.

How the scam was unearthed?

Mumbai Police have also accused Chhabria of registered the same vehicle twice and at times even thrice with different regional transport offices (RTO) of different states. He then used the registration numbers to obtain more loans in the same car.

The Mumbai Police received a tip that a DC Avanti with fake registration number is parked outside the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai. The cops laid a trap to catch the vehicle and were able to do that successfully. On the night of 18th, the police caught the car outside the Taj Mahal hotel. The cops found out that the vehicle is registered in Tamil Nadu while the chassis and the VIN are registered in Haryana RTO under a different registration number.

The car owner, who is from Tamil Nadu failed to explain the same to the police. Curiously, the police also found out that the address in Haryana belongs to Dilip Chhabria’s company. The cops then seized the vehicle and asked the owner of the vehicle to become a complainant in the case. The cops also suspect that Chhabria’s company released cars with the same VIN and chassis numbers to fool the financial organisations.

Cops suspect frauds nearly about Rs 100 crores but the amount is expected to rise with the ongoing investigations. The crime branch is also investigation the quantum loss to the government exchequer caused by Dilip Chhabria by the virtue of nonpayment of applicable taxes such as customs duties, GST and more.

The police have booked the car designer under Sections 420, 465, 467, 468, 471, 120(B) and 34 of the Indian Penal Code or IPC. The lawyer of Chhabria has said that the cheating case has been filed on the behest of a disgruntled partner of DCDPL. The lawyer claims that his partner Kiran Kumar owns 52 per cent shares in DCDPL. Dilip Chhabria registered a case against Kiran Kumar on November 12, and the lawyer for Chhabria’s partner alleges that this case is just an arm twisting tactic.

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