Maur blast: Probe zooms in on 140 Maruti 800 cars

WATCH VIDEO | Army Chief Warns J&K Residents, Says Action Against Those Who Create Hurdles During Operations

The Punjab police had approached the car manufacturer for help to track down the owner of the car, which had been rigged into an IED and detonated at a public meeting of the Congress candidate in Maur Mandi.

The engine number and the chassis number of the car had been erased by the perpetrators. The car’s registration papers were also fake.

A team of Punjab Police led by a Deputy Superintendent of Police took at least three parts of the car to Maruti Suzuki, where an analysis of the “mounting” on which engine is placed showed up the first three digits of the engine number.

A senior official at the auto company revealed that the three digits (722) of the six-digit engine number were visible to the naked eye on the engine mounting.

This series belonged to the 1992 model, he said. The official said that forensic examination of the engine had also indicated the same first three numbers.

Kamal Goyal, a partner in the Maruti Suzuki dealership in Bathinda who had sent his mechanics to help the police decipher the engine and chassis numbers, said, “The engine number appeared to have been erased using some grinding machine. The part on which the chassis number is written had been replaced with a welded piece.”

The police now have the task of tracing the owners of 1992 Maruti 800s with various permutations and combinations of the first three known digits with the remaining three. To begin with, the Punjab Police are learnt to have zeroed in on about 140 cars. Teams have already been sent to trace the owners of cars bearing such engine numbers.

“We dug out pan-India data for that particular series of the engine. The Punjab Police are initially focusing on neighbouring states,” said the Maruti official.

“The car and its engine cannot remain untraced. Since 1992, it might have changed a few hands because of reselling,” said a Punjab Police officer involved in the investigations, adding that police would connect the dots from the beginning to the last person who was in possession of that car or any part of the car.