Click to play videoMumbai: What's in a car logo? Turns out, everything! So imagine Rohan Desai's disappointment when he found an empty spot scarred by chisel marks where the emblem on his Rs 11-lakh silver Chevrolet should have been.
At first he thought it was random accident. “I spoke to a couple of my friends and I realised it has happened to them also. So this is a huge problem,” Rohan said.
Stealing car logos is the newest trend in auto theft. What's more worrying is that the police suspect that the culprits are young college students.
In January this year, police arrested three schoolboys in Dadar who stole car logos for pocket money. In a similar incident two teenagers were arrested in Chembur early in February and last month police nabbed two college students who were stealing a Mercedes car logo in Powai.
“Logos of big cars are often stolen and then sold at Kurla for a decent price like Rs 2,000 to 4,000,” senior police inspector Rajdoot Rupwate said.
Meanwhile, car showrooms are reporting an astonishing trend.
“The logo sales in the last six months have gone up by 15 per cent,” Manager, Fleet Sales, Chevrolet, Roman Rodrigues said.
Police suggest that the stolen logos are sold at lower rates in the grey market, but some also make their way back to car showrooms. So when you look to replace your missing car logo, you may actually be buying the one that was stolen from you.
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