An internal audit conducted in July uncovered a massive fraud at an Ahmedabad car showroom, where the manager and assistant manager allegedly sold 68 cars without the company's knowledge, causing a loss of nearly ₹9.71 crore. The scam prompted the company’s CEO, Rajneesh Arora, to file a formal police complaint after discrepancies were revealed in the trust department's vehicle records.
The audit showed that 53 second-hand cars purchased by the showroom were missing, while another 15 existed only on paper. Investigations pointed to showroom manager Jitendra Sharma and assistant manager Chirag Dutt as the masterminds behind the fraud. Between April and July, they had sold these cars to various dealers without registering the sales in the company’s books.
The CEO explained that the company follows a standard procedure of buying back old vehicles from customers who trade them in for new ones. Sharma and Dutt reportedly bypassed this system by directly negotiating with customers and selling the old cars to third-party dealers for personal gain.
Further scrutiny revealed that Chirag Dutt had a questionable track record, with a previous case involving the use of a duplicate registration certificate to sell a car, though no FIR had been filed then. In the current case, he personally sold 16 vehicles and pocketed the entire payment, earning a ₹10,000 commission on each car sold.
To cover their tracks, the duo reportedly funneled some of the money received from these off-the-books sales into official company accounts, disguising them as legitimate transactions. Their scheme unraveled during the audit when several vehicle records were found missing.
Both men have since been arrested and remain in police custody as investigations continue.
