GPS device helps car owner locate stolen vehicle, Latur youth held

PUNE: Reel life may mimic real life, but the similarity ends there. A 20-year-old youth from Latur learned this the hard way.
A team of the city crime branch arrested Revan Sontakke for stealing four-wheelers from Sangi and Kolhapur from November last year. The police also recovered two sports utility vehicles (SUVs) and a car from him.

Sontakke, police said, had studied the modus of stealing four-wheelers by watching a few Bollywood flicks on the YouTube and made away with an SUV from a garage in Kolhapur in November last year.
He stole another SUV from a garage in Sangli on July 5 and a car from Kolhapur on August 3. He ran out of luck when the owner of the car traced his vehicle through the GPS device and informed the police about it.
The GPS location indicated the car was at Krishnanagar in Mohammadwadi, where Sontakke was visiting his uncle. The youth abandoned the car on getting a hint that the police were on his trail.
The crime branch personnel led by inspector Anjum Bagwan, under the guidance of deputy commissioner Shirish Sardeshpande and assistant commissioner of police Bhanupratap Barge, traced and arrested him while he was travelling in an SUV with a stolen number plate.
He told police that he had visited garages in Kolhapur and Sangli and stole the keys from the dash boards to steal the vehicles late in the night. He used the car for ferrying passengers between Hadapsar and Solapur.
Sontakke was detained under section 41 (d) of the CrPC. His custody was transferred to Kolhapur police.