Bengaluru businessman steals car from OLX seller on pretext of test drive, arrested

The accused person took the car for a test drive and never returned. (Representational image)

A 36-year-old Bengaluru businessman allegedly made off with a car after taking its keys from its owner for a test drive, The Times of India reported on May 16.

MG Venkatesh Naik, the accused person, had in January come across an OLX advertisement for a Maruti Brezza. He asked the seller, Ravindra Elluri, to meet him to talk about a possible purchase.

When they met, Naik asked Elluri if he could take the car for a test drive. The seller agreed to it and Naik drove off. When he did not return, Elluri went to the police to file a complaint.

The seller did not know Naik’s name at that time. In their efforts to track him down, the police tried to trace the phone he had used to contact Elluri.

They also obtained 2,500 IP addresses from OLX in an effort to locate Naik. It took months to analyse all of them.

“Our search was fruitful on May 10. Based on our findings from the investigation, we traced the vehicle to Dasarahalli main road and arrested Naik," an unidentified official told The Times of India.

After his arrest, Naik told the police he stole the car to replace the one he had to sell to pay off dome debt. The man had borrowed money from his friends to fund his wife’s rural elections campaign.

"He said he used to own a Vitara Brezza which he sold a few months ago,” another officer was quoted as saying by the newspaper. “Since he had always visited his village near Bagepalli in his car, he thought it would be humiliating to go without it. He then saw the ad and decided to steal the car.”