Sector 2 resident and civic activist Lalithamba BV has done something brilliant. Two weeks ago, she reported to the cops about an abandoned vehicle in front of Somasundrapalya Lake in front of Isha Lakefront View apartments. She even checked out the owner’s name on the transport authority’s website.
According to the RTO, the car belongs to one Rajesh Kallayel and was registered in 2007
“The cops said that they don’t have a towing vehicle then,” said Lalithamba. She followed up a week after her complaint, and the cops said that they are fetching more details on the vehicle from the Road Transport Organisation (RTO) before deciding on their next step.
She followed up again today, and found that half an hour before her call, the cops had towed away the car to an empty site next to Bandepalya Police Station in Sector 3. “The cops said that perhaps the thief ran out of fuel and abandoned the stolen vehicle, never to return for some reason,” said Lalithamba.
We called Electronic City traffic inspector Mariswamy, and he had this to say: “Since it was abandoned for such a long time, it appears to be a stolen vehicle. However, the Bandepalya police guys are supposed to verify and confirm.”
A few days later, the car owner was traced online by another resident
Car owner traced in Brussels by HSR resident
The mystery of this car is now unravelled, this time by another HSR resident Shrinivas Deshmukh who did some nifty social media lookup to contact the real owner of the car. In a Facebook chat, car proprietor Rajesh Kallayel says that he’s in Brussels and had kept his car at his friend’s place who never informed him that the car was stolen. He was indeed planning to sell his car and had hired a person to prepare all the papers. “But he stole my money and is not giving my RC book. It’s a mess,” car owner Rajesh told Deshmukh. Delaying the issue further is that he is only coming to Bangalore in February. Until then, the Mahindra Renault car will remain abandoned at the Bandepalya police station in HSR Layout, Sector 3.
It may be recalled that another HSR resident (you can read our earlier story) Lalithamba BV had pursued the traffic police to remove an abandoned vehicle in her vicinity for over two weeks. Since no complaint was registered against the vehicle, the cops took their time and eventually shifted it to the Bandepalya police station premises where it’s still lying abandoned. The cops speculated that it could be a stolen vehicle. And then resident Deshmukh finds the owner on social media and alerts him to the stolen car.
Here are the screenshots of the conversation that followed between him and the car owner.
