Organized crime junkies, your next fix has arrived. Thieves somehow managed to sneak over 900 engines out of a factory in India over the course of five years, with police describing the operation as an inside job. And no one seems to knows how they pulled it off.
The theft was discovered after the plant, located in the south of the country near the town of Penukonda, conducted an audit last year, according to the India Times. Management then launched an investigation in March, informing police of the problem.
“Preliminary investigation shows the engines were stolen in a phased and planned manner,” police told the India Times. “It is certain that some insiders are involved. We suspect that there was connivance between some former and present employees.”
The Kia Seltos, one of the vehicles produced at the Penukonda plant.
Investigators, who originally suspected the engines may have been stolen in transit, have now determined they were taken from the plant itself, with bad actors tampering with facility records to ensure a clean exit. What’s still unclear is exactly how thieves were able to physically move the assembled engines out of the factory. These aren’t small items, after all.
“(The thefts) started in 2020,” another officer told NDTV. “It has been a continuous process for nearly five years. We will go deep into the investigation.”
The plant, which builds cars like the Carens, Seltos, Sonet, and Syros for local markets, assembles over 300,000 vehicles per year. So it’s easy to see how a relatively small amount engines could go missing over such a long time span.
“We have formed three special teams to investigate the case,” another police official said. “Our teams are traveling across the country to collect crucial documents, and the investigation is progressing swiftly,”
Kia has yet to comment on the matter, but an official for the plant told the India Times output was not affected by the missing engines.
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