Mumbai, Apr 12 (Mid-day) : In an attempt to impress the woman he had secretly married, a 21-year-old student went the distance, quite literally. The Nagpur resident stole a car from his friend, and drove it all the way to Borivli, to sell it and use the money to finance his grand gesture for the new wife.

However, he didn’t get very far, being nabbed by the police late on Thursday night. The arrested student has been identified as Akshay Saxena.

Deepak Jadhav, a constable attached to Crime Branch (Unit XI), received a tip-off from his informant that a man was going to sell an SUV Fortuner with a Nagpur-based registration number in Borivli.
Constable Jadhav informed his seniors, who laid a trap and arrested the youth red-handed, as soon as he arrived in the city to sell it.

Saxena lives in Nagpur with his family, and had married his girlfriend secretly. Since their families didn’t know, they were forced to live apart, in their respective residences. Saxena hails from a wealthy and well-respected family of academicians in the city.

Crime Branch sources revealed that Saxena wanted to give his new bride a wedding present, and so he hatched a plan to rob a car belonging to his friend’s father, who is Shiv Sena’s district president in Nagpur.

Around two months ago, he went to his friend’s house and managed to get an imprint of the SUV’s key on a bar of soap. Using this, he made a duplicate.

Finally, he robbed the SUV on Sunday from Nagpur’s Nandavan area, and gave it a complete makeover, with a fresh coat of paint in a new colour, changed its exterior and gave it a new number plate.

He then decided to sell the car in Mumbai, and using the Internet, contacted a car dealer in the city, telling them he was looking to sell a Fortuner.

“After Saxena contacted a car dealer in Mumbai, our informant got the news. On the basis of the information, we laid a trap and three hours later, nabbed the man,” said API Manohar Harpude from Crime Branch (Unit XI).

During interrogations, Saxena revealed that he is a first year student of engineering.

“Constable Deepak Jadhav has done a good job,” Harpude said, adding, “The FIR for the stolen vehicle has been registered in Deepti Khadaan police station in Nagpur. We are going to hand him over to the Nagpur police for further investigations.”