The arrest of a gang accused of stealing trucks should have ideally come as a much-awaited relief for transporters whose vehicles were stolen. But with the stolen trucks being dismantled and their parts sold, the transporters are now struggling with fewer trucks to run their business and to repay the loans taken to buy them.

A few days back the Dongri police arrested Ali Hussain Idris Khan alias Lambu, Pramod Murlidhar Pandey, Dilip Chaurasia, Rajkapoor Arya and Hazaratullah Khan for stealing trucks. The arrests came two months after Dongri-based transporter Abdullah Chand Ali Khan had registered a complaint alleging that in March the accused had offered to buy six trucks, entered into an agreement using forged documents and absconded with the trucks without making the entire payment.

“Since my business was running into losses, I wanted to sell some of my trucks and Pandey had approached me with an offer to buy six of them. We had entered into an agreement whereby the party was to pay me only an initial profit amount and pay the cost price in installments to the bank which had lent me the money to buy those trucks. I handed over the last truck on March 30 after which Pandey stopped responding to my calls,” said Khan who eventually found one truck and the spare parts of three other trucks in a Kalyan godown.

“Now I am stuck with unpaid bank loans amounting to over Rs 60 lakh. All I have with me is the remains of the trucks I sold to Pandey,” said Khan bitterly.

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