How Bengaluru Police tracked down a man who stole a car via an OLX ad
The accused stole the car on the pretext of taking it for a test drive.
In a bizarre case, Bengaluru Police tracked down a 36-year-old who had stolen a car on the pretext of taking it for a test drive. The police did so after verifying 2,500 IP addresses provided by OLX.
MG Venkatesh Naik (36) from Amruthanagar in the city and Bagegpalli in Chakkaballapura district met Ravindra Elluri (47), a resident of the Coffee Board Layout and an engineer on January 30. Alluri had placed an ad on OLX to sell his Maruti Vitara Brezza and had received five responses. One of them was from Naik who met Elluri at 7PM.
Naik wanted to take the car for a test drive and when Elluri handed over the keys, the former took the car and drove off.
At that time, Elluri didn’t know who drove aways his car and filed a complaint against unknown persons at the Amruthahalli Police station.
I turned out that Naik was using a stolen phone. To track him down, the cops took around 2,500 IP addresses on OLX and finally found their man on May 10.
Naik confessed to the crime. He said that he had lost a lot of money in December 2020 when his wife was a candidate in the Gram Panchayat elections.
To pay off his debts, he had sold his Vitara Brezza. However, he was ashamed to show his face at his village without the car so he stole the car from Elluri before changing its number plate.
He is currently remanded in judicial custody.