The key to car crime

By Ayanjit Sen BBC correspondent in Delhi

Police puzzling over a spate of car thefts in Delhi have nailed a new culprit - car park attendants.

Rich pickings: A packed parking lot in Delhi

Around 6,000 cars have been stolen in Delhi this year, many of them from manned parking lots.

Police now think they know how some of these cars were spirited away.

The recent arrest of a man contracted by the Delhi municipal corporation to supply it with parking attendants has lifted the lid on a very profitable scam.

Wax impressions

According to the police, customers at public parking lots would unwittingly entrust the crooked parking attendants with their car keys.

This is common practice in Delhi, done so that parked cars can be moved around to make way for other vehicles in the crowded lots.

In this case, however, the attendants would take the keys and swiftly get them duplicated - using either a computer-aided key cutting device or simple wax impressions.

Once copied, the keys would be handed back to the unsuspecting owner as they return to pick up their cars.

The car would then be stolen at the earliest opportunity, often from outside the owner's house.

Number-plate swap

"On many occasions, car papers are also left inside the car, which is used by the thieves to get the address and other details of the car owner," Mr Deependra Pathak, Delhi's deputy commissioner of police, told the BBC.

The arrest of the municipal contractor led police to recover at least 15 duplicate keys of cars the thieves were planning to steal.

A number of parking attendants were also apprehended.

"The number-plates of the cars are changed immediately after they are stolen," said a senior police officer.

Bikes for lights

Middlemen based outside Delhi would then pay the thieves to transport the stolen car across the country.

Under questioning, the parking attendants revealed that most of the stolen cars were sold in the eastern states of Bihar, West Bengal and Assam, and even as far away as Nepal, where they would fetch a higher price than in Delhi.

Police also discovered a lucrative trade in stolen motorbikes - conducted for a very different purpose.

"The engines of the motorbikes can be used as [electricity] generators, and are sold in smaller towns and villages," said Mr Pathak.