Ace car designer and founder of DC design Dilip Chhabria, who runs a car modification studio, was arrested late on Monday night for his alleged involvement in a dubious car finance and fake registration racket involving high-end luxury cars.
Acting on a tip-off that a two-seater sports-car DC-Avanti designed by Chhabria allegedly bore a fake registration number, the Mumbai police crime branch sleuths kept a watch on the movement of the car, which was initially expected at Hotel Trident at Nariman Point in south Mumbai on December 17, but failed to turn up there.
On the following night, the Crime Intelligence Unit (CIU) laid a trap near the Hotel Taj Mahal at Colaba, intercepted the vehicle and seized it. During the questioning, the owner of the car Indermal Ramani produced the ownership documents of the vehicle as registered with Chennai RTO, which were found to be genuine.
However, during the investigations, the police found that there was another car with the same engine and chassis number registered with Haryana RTO.The investigations have revealed Chabaria’s alleged involvement in the car finance and fake registration racket involving high-end luxury cars.
Acting on a complaint registered against him 10 days, Chhabria was nabbed from his garage at the MIDC area at Andheri’s MIDC in north Mumbai. His arrest has shocked car enthusiasts and those in the automobile finance industry.
Chhabria -- whose brand DC Design involved in modifying cars into luxury lounges launched India’s first sportscar “the DC Avanti” and also showcased its second product – the TCA at the Auto Expo ---has been booked under Sections 420, 465, 467, 468, 471, 120(B) and 34 of the Indian Penal Code or IPC.
The investigations have also revealed that Chhabria’s firm Dilip Chhabria Designs Pvt. Ltd. (DCDPL) produced 127 DC-Avantis and sold them to customers in India and abroad. The Crime branch sleuths suspect that many of these vehicles might have been involved in the car finance and fake registration racket.
The police said that multiple loans, averaging to Rs. 42 lakh per vehicle, had been taken with respect to 90-odd cars by DCDPL, allegedly posing as customers for their own manufactured vehicles.
The modus operandi was to take loans, sometimes even multiple loans from financial institutions on cars and sell these hypothecated cars to other customers before or after availing the finance through the fraudulent means. The investigators are to quantify the exact losses suffered by the government by way of unpaid taxes, customs duties and GST. The investigators estimated that the loss to the state exchequer could be around Rs 40 crore.
The investigators suspect that the DCDPL, which was set up in 1993 but went bankrupt in 2018, might have cheated many automobile finance companies and banks.
Apart from designing the lounge for the Mahindra Marazzo, DC Designalso released the lounge conversion of a slew of new car and it had several high-profile clients like Madhuri Dixit and Hrithik Roshan who reportedly had their vehicles customised from this brand. Some popular designs from DC Design include the lounge design kits of the Mahindra XUV500, Duster, Toyota Fortuner and Innova. Chhabria has also modified cars in the international market like Rolls Royce and Land Cruisers. His new brand DC2 has plans for launching electric cars in future.
Chhabria -- who came into limelight in the nineties after he produced some fancy modified private cars for celebrities and vanity vans of Bollywood personalities – went onto design concept cars, luxury passenger buses, and even aircraft interiors.
DCDPL rolled out its first indigenously-made sportscar”the DC Avanti” in 2016, a year after securing approvals from the Automative Research Association of India (ARAI).
However, DCDPL ran into rough weather before the first sportscar was launched, as cricketer Dinesh Karthik moved a Chennai-based Consumer Courts over the car dealer’s failure to refund the booking amount of Rs.5 lakh for a car costing nearly Rs.35 lakh.