Jaipur: A police survey has exposed a glaring loophole in Jaipur’s self-drive rental market: high-end SUVs were allegedly being rented out for as little as Rs 1,000 a day without operators recording the identity of customers.The findings led city police to seize around 150 SUVs in Sept and shut down 22 unauthorised rental agencies allegedly operating without the permissions required to lease out vehicles. The operation followed a series of complaints about brawls outside clubs, road rage incidents and accidents.Deputy commissioner of police (South) Rajarshi Raj Varma said the survey found a network of operators renting out privately registered cars for commercial use. The agencies charged between Rs 1,000 and Rs 3,000 a day but did not maintain even basic customer records.“They did not record the identity of people taking the vehicles, collect Aadhaar or driving licence details or conduct police verification,” Varma said. He added that only a handful of registered agencies were following the prescribed norms.Police said the biggest concern was the absence of any paper trail. Investigators found that local car owners were putting their vehicles up for rental through unauthorised operators, making it difficult to establish who had taken a vehicle and for what purpose.The crackdown began after police noticed SUVs with modified number plates and heavily tinted windows being driven around the city. Investigators then conducted an undercover exercise to find out how people who apparently could not afford such expensive vehicles were getting access to them.The probe found that some rented SUVs had allegedly been used to transport drugs. Vehicles rented through the network also figured in cases involving abductions, personal disputes and intimidation of rivals, Varma said.He said police were receiving repeated complaints about people using rental vehicles to settle personal disputes by abducting rivals or getting involved in drunken brawls outside clubs.Police said the absence of customer records made it difficult to determine whether operators knowingly rented vehicles to criminals or simply failed to carry out basic checks. But investigators found that most operators had neither the required permissions nor any system to identify and track customers.
