
Odisha Police have arrested Mandeep Choudhury from Angul for allegedly renting a self-drive car in Bhubaneswar and then stealing it. The accused tried to hide the vehicle's number plate with black tape,…
Odisha Police have arrested Mandeep Choudhury from Angul for allegedly renting a self-drive car in Bhubaneswar and then stealing it. The accused tried to hide the vehicle's number plate with black tape, but was identified through CCTV footage.

Police traced the stolen vehicle on August 20 and arrested Choudhury after raids. Four criminal cases are already pending against him at three police stations. The car has been recovered.
This is a routine arrest but highlights a growing risk in India's unregulated self-drive car rental market. Rentals often lack real-time vehicle tracking or mandatory police verification of customers, making theft easy. With four prior cases, the accused was a repeat offender known to police but still able to rent a car. The real gap is enforcement: rental companies rarely check criminal records. Watch if Odisha's transport department mandates GPS tracking and background checks for rental cars, as other states like Karnataka have proposed.
Source: odishatv.in
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