When a vehicle, stolen from Delhi’s Dwarka area on Thursday morning, was tracked down via global positioning system (GPS) and the police teams finally managing to recover it from Shikohabad, about 300 km from Agra, it was a firm in Pune that was directing the progress of the chase. The thief was nabbed and the SUV— a Tavera — recovered.

“It was like a police-thief chase, only that it was being carried out on our server,” said Ajay Mittal, CEO of the Pune-based Geotrackers, that installed the GPS device in the car belonging to a travel company. This is one of the first incidents of the police nabbing a car thief using this kind of technology.

While it was about 3.30 am when the thief made off with the parked Tavera belonging to Gurgaon’s A Tours and Travels, it was only by 8 am that the driver realised that the vehicle was missing and reported it. “We received a call from them early morning asking us not to make any changes in our server as they were on the vehicle’s track. Immediately we too got on to the server and started tracking the SUV’s route,” said Mittal, who has an office in Gurgaon too.

While the car zipped through cities and seemed headed for Lucknow, the server showed its speed, recording the halts and idling period as well, giving the police ample time to send signals to the police stations on the route. When the SUV reached Shikohabad it was intercepted by the local police and the culprit was taken into custody.

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