Biker thief held

AHMEDABAD: A vehicle thief who had stolen no less than 100 bikes from the city since 2009, has been arrested by the Maninagar police. Jimmy Sharma, 32, a resident of Vatva, was nabbed on Wednesday from Maninagar along with spare parts of more than 60 bikes. The cops required two trucks to bring the seized spare parts to the police station.
In 2009, city crime branch had arrested Sharma as a suspect in a bike theft case.He had then confessed to 40 bike thefts across the city. All the thefts were then from Shahibaug.
"Jimmy hails from Assam. He came to Ahmedabad with his father who used to work in the government fisheries department. He completed MSc from an Ahmedabad college and then turned to vehicle theft. He confesses that stealing vehicles seemed easier than taking up a job," said Maninagar police.
His arrest in 2009 taught him some important lessons. "He realized then that selling stolen bikes with forged papers will always carry a higher risk of him being arrested. Since then he changed his modus operandi and started dismantling stolen bikes and then selling them to scrap dealer," said joint commissioner of police, crime branch, A K Sharma.
Jimmy was riding a scooter in Maninagar, carrying some metal parts in plastic bags. Finding his movement suspicious, police stopped him and searched his vehicle. Some spare parts were recovered from him and he could not account for the origin of those vehicle parts. On further questioning, he confessed to vehicle thefts.
"He claims that after stealing vehicles from across the city, he drove them down to his home in Vatva. There in his workshop he broke the vehicle to its spare parts. In the scrap market of Jamalpur he used to sell the bike spare parts to two dealers - Arif and Anis. "The dealers used to pay him Rs 15,000 per bike. We have tracked them down and recovered spare parts of 60 bikes from them. We are now hunting for number plates of the bikes that he stole. He has claimed that he used to dispose of the number plates at a deserted place in the outskirts of the city," said a police official.