A national martial artist and an engineer have been arrested by Delhi Police for allegedly stealing vehicles of an online car renting portal after hiring.

The accused have been identified as Sahil Shokken (22), a resident of Bahardurgarh in Haryana and Sachin Parasar (20) a resident of Rohini Sector-17.

According to Madhur Verma, the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), New Delhi district, a representative of Zoomcar India Private Limited lodged a complaint at Connaught Place Police Station where he alleged that one Dushyant Chauhan, a resident of Bakhatwarpur, Delhi had booked XUV 500 car from the Zoomcar.com.

“The accused had paid Rs 6,744 through online mode and their booking was scheduled from May 16 to May 17. However, the accused did not return the vehicle and also removed its GPS. During investigation, the last location of the GPS was found at Mandi in Himachal Pradesh,” said the DCP.

“Police scanned several CCTV cameras and after receiving a tip-off regarding the accused persons, they arrested Shokken from Bahadurgarh in Haryana on Monday. On his instance, Parasar was also arrested from Sector-17 Rohini,” said the DCP.

“During interrogation, Shokken and Parasar disclosed that they have been a customer of Zoomcars.com for the last four to five years and they know the lacunas of the organisation,” the DCP said.

“Shokken, along with his friends Sombeer, Sumit and Sachin, had planned to hire one car XUV 500 Mahindra on fake documents from a fake phone number. They took the car from Connaught Place on May 16 and later removed its GPS near Kundili Border in Sonipat and threw it in a running truck,” the DCP said.

“The accused also revealed that earlier, they had booked and stolen a number of vehicles from Zoomcar with same modus operandi and later sold them to bootleggers of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh,” said the DCP.

“The accused have stolen four to five high end vehicles like Ford Endeavour, Mercedes and Tata Hexa. Shooken was a national player of martial arts but in 2014, he was fallen from the train while he was going to participate in National Games and his foot got damaged. Parasar’s father was expired in 2018 and his mother is a cancer patient,” said the DCP adding that the stolen XUV 500 car was recovered from the possession of the accused.