Special Task Force of South-East district on Sunday arrested a person suspected to be a serial car-lifter.
The accused has been identified as Zahid alias Anna (40), who hails from Hapur, but was currently residing in Meerut.
"Special Task Force of South-East district has arrested a car lifter named Zahid alias Anna. The accused was famous as the leader of Anna gang in Meerut-Aligarh-NCR region. STF was given the task of keeping an eye on auto-lifters and car-lifters considering the increasing cases of car lifting in the district," Chinmoy Bisway, DCP, South East said here.
"We received an input that Zahid who operates in Meerut-Aligarh-NCR region is planning some incident here in Delhi. On July 23, a vehicle checking was done near Kalkaji. On spotting a car, the person inside it was questioned. He could not show satisfactory papers. On further probe, it was revealed that the car was stolen from Rohini police station," the police officer said.
"He has accepted to have been involved in more than 100 cases of car-lifting. After seizing of that car, 10 more cars have been recovered from Delhi, Garhmukteshwar and Noida. Zahid is illiterate. He came in contact with some gangs operating out of Meerut which were involved in car-lifting," he informed.
Bisway further said that Zahid then set up his own gang and trained young men to steal cars.
"Young people who were trained by Zahid used to call him Anna and this is how his gang came to be known as Anna gang. His gang members frequently used to change the location of stolen vehicles so as to avoid attention by local police. Our teams have started raiding several places in Uttar Pradesh to get hold of his gang members but they are still absconding," the officer said.