It takes 18 hrs to assemble these beauties & just 30 mins for thieves to dismantle it!

It takes around 18- 20 hours, for car manufacturers, to breathe life into inanimate metal and produce a standard car. Years of technological advancement and innovation has helped manufacturers, to churn out cars in factory-like precision.

However in South Delhi, motor vehicle thieves, take just thirty minutes to dismantle the car and turn them into lifeless chunks of metal, and send them to their mortuaries in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh.

But the police are not far behind in catching up with motor vehicle thieves, as the South Police District, has stepped up efforts to clamp down on motor vehicle theft, and have deployed additional patrolling staff.

The efforts have paid off as the District has seen a 26 percent work out rate compared to the Delhi Police average of 9 percent. The District has worked out a total of 846 cases in the present year and has managed to recover 342 vehicles, out of which 21 were recovered outside Delhi. 57 cases from other districts have also been solved.

Ishwar Singh, the Deputy Commissioner of Police (South), is quick to dismiss his role in the workout and gives credit to his colleagues. He takes out several pages marked with bright coloured tags and waves them at this reporter, in those pages are crime analysis reports that he has conducted in South District. "I always rely on human intelligence. I regularly conduct meetings with my patrol staff and get updates on every kind of crime that takes place in my district and we make strategies accordingly," said Ishwar Singh.

Singh's focus on motor vehicle thefts is quite understood, as the high-profile district of South Delhi has seen various vehicle thefts of expensive cars over the years.

The arrest of four members of the Dilawar gang in the month of January is a case in point. The gang used to steal expensive cars like Fortuner, Scorpio, Ford Endeavour, SUVs, Innova etc and would dispose of them in scrap yards in Meerut. They had stolen at least 25 luxury cars.

"It took them just thirty minutes to dismantle the cars. They tyres, windscreen, doors, batteries, chassis were taken out without wasting time," Singh added.

When the car would be brought to the 'operating table', instead of surgeons, 'Biscuit' and 'Sunar' would operate on the car with the precision of a surgeon. Singh explains, "Biscuit was the man who would cut out the Chassis of the car. The 'biscuit' would then fit his own parts and later sell the car to buyers based in Punjab and various North Eastern states".

The police are now on the look-out for Mehtab, the main member of the Dilawar gang. But their focus remains on South Delhi. The night patrolling staff has started to coordinate with the private security of various societies in South Delhi. The guards who are caught sleeping are woken up by the patrol staff, who chat them up, to make sure that they do not doze off again. In fact, Whatsapp notifications are sent to the respective RWAs about the security arrangements in their area.

"In Mehrauli district, we had chalked out a strategy with the local RWAs and we sealed three exit points, which could have been used as an escape route. The last exit was covered by the patrol staff, and the motor vehicle theft dramatically went down in the area," Singh added.