New Delhi: A white Hyundai i20, sold seven times without a single paper trail, blew up near the Red Fort, killing 12 people. As police traced the car through a maze of dealers and dubious transfers, it did more than expose a terror plot—it opened cracks in India’s second-hand car market.
The car changed multiple hands across several states without proper re-registration. Despite several transfers, the official registration certificate (RC) remained in the name of a previous owner, Salman, for years. The last documented sale was to a man named Tariq from Pulwama, Jammu and Kashmir, using allegedly fake documents.
Beyond the Hyundai i20, the investigation is tracking two other vehicles that are tied to the terror blast—a red Ford EcoSport and a Maruti Suzuki Brezza. The red Ford EcoSport linked to Umar has been recovered near Khandawali village in Faridabad, Haryana. The police had seized it from a farmhouse owned by Umar’s friend. The Brezza remains missing.
Behind every unsigned affidavit and every untransferred RC lies a potential crime, a loophole that law enforcement, dealers, sellers, and buyers have long ignored.
After the incident, Delhi Police directed all DCPs to meet local car dealers and have SHOs review dealership records. The drive—coordinated with Haryana and UP Police—is set to trace vehicle transactions involving fake identities or unverified payments.
Buyers are expressing fears over purchasing unverified cars, and sellers don’t want to invite legal woes. Many people who bought second-hand vehicles in recent months are now demanding police verification and fresh documentation. X is flooded with advice to avoid cars with multiple transfers, fake RCs, incomplete sales records, suspiciously low prices or cash-only transactions that bypass official channels.
As the investigations into the Red Fort blast case take their due course, there is a new spotlight on how the used car trade in India can be exploited for criminal purposes.
“This is a very serious issue and it has not been addressed neither by the state government nor by the central government agencies,” said Gopal Krishan, owner of Auto Scrap Centre in Chandigarh. “People are very careless if they are disposing of any vehicle, whether they are disposing of it as a scrap or reselling it.”
Panic and chaos
At a small used-car dealership in Rohini, a 34-year-old dealer has been panicking after the arrest of Amit, a dealer of Royal Car Plaza, for facilitating the sale of the white i20. The incident has dealers on edge as one wrong sale could now put them behind bars.
Even dealers who know the ins and outs of selling cars across states understand that the business rests on paperwork, verification, and trust—any of which can be shattered overnight.
Dealers operate under two scenarios. If the car has been registered in Delhi and the buyer is also from the city, then ownership is transferred without an NOC (No Objection Certificate). For buyers from other states, an NOC is required, and the car must be re-registered there.
“Issuing the NOC in the buyer’s name shows online in Delhi, but the Delhi record stays active until the car is registered in the new state, preventing the customer from completing registration,” the dealer from Rohini told ThePrint.
For him, the paper trail is crucial. He said that when an NOC is issued, the buyer’s ID is deposited at the RTO of the receiving state. Even if the car isn’t yet registered there, the record shows the NOC has been issued in their name.
That he added is the dealer’s safety net.
“Without NOC or without transfer, they are not given,” the Rohini dealer said. “Sometimes it happens that the NOC gets delayed for any reason. Suppose a buyer’s address isn’t updated on Aadhaar, and he asks for 10-15 days to update it. And if there’s any incident in that period, the legal liability still rests with the previous owner, because officially the car is still registered in their name.” It is this window of uncertainty that can leave the seller and his vehicle vulnerable, in case a crime is committed using it.
Also read: Red Fort blast: Why are doctors being recruited and what is ‘white-collar terror’
Why buyers don’t re-register
Despite understanding the urgency of obtaining an NOC and completing re-registration, many buyers still fail to follow through with the process.
“Each state has its own rules. Buyers must pay the remaining road tax while re-registering the car, which can range from ₹20,000 to ₹40,000 depending on the state,” said the 34-year-old dealer.
He added that most buyers purchase cheaper cars from Delhi, but often don’t realise they must pay road tax again in their own state. A mix of ignorance and negligence drives this behaviour.
“Those who know this, they get it done. But those who don’t — they delay it, or don’t get it done out of carelessness,” he said.
Krishan, a scrap dealer, has been receiving calls from worried buyers and sellers after the Red Fort incident, anxious that their cars might land them in legal trouble. With over two decades in the business, he knows all too well the pitfalls people can face when dealing with cars.
The real issue, he explained, is how second-hand cars are sold in India. Many sellers assume that handing over an affidavit is enough to complete the sale—but that’s a mistake. Legally, the car must be transferred to the buyer’s name before delivery.
“Simply giving the car with an affidavit offers no protection: in any future legal complication, the Supreme Court has ruled that the RC holder remains responsible,” said Krishan.
He recalled a recent client who ignored his advice. Due to low rates at government scrap centres, the client sold his car through CARS24 for ₹1,000–2,000. The car, sold in Himachal, had an NOC issued, but two months later, an FIR was filed against it in Shimla. The client called, blaming the second-hand car dealer, but Krishan explained that the liability remained with him because the RC was still in his name. Until the FIR was cleared and the transfer properly completed, any legal or financial consequences fell squarely on the original owner—a situation he says occurs daily.
Also read: Red Fort blast: A ‘panicked’ doctor & the unravelling of a post-Op Sindoor plan to serial-bomb Delhi
‘Sometimes fake IDs slip through’
In Moti Nagar, Arhan, a 26-year-old car dealer and owner of Galaxy Cars, has been flipping through a stack of RC copies and ID proofs for the last two days.
Dealers like Arhan handle hundreds of transfers a year, often between strangers, and sometimes, one of those cars ends up in an FIR. Often, when a car is involved in a legal issue, the trail leads back to the dealer first—something like what happened in the Red Fort blast case.
He recalled an incident when someone in Haryana used his car’s registration number on a stolen vehicle. But the CCTV footage saved him, showing his car in the parking lot.
“Stolen vehicles can be disguised using numbers from cars listed online. Online marketplaces like OLX and Facebook make it easy for fraudsters to copy registration numbers, often targeting dealer listings,” said Arhan.
He has been following a fixed process to protect himself.
“We do paperwork, we send a car to a customer, we take two to three IDs of the customer, we take two to three IDs of the witnesses. The entire payment is from one number, the details of the account, everything is confirmed, so that if there is any problem later, it is proved to everyone,” he said.
Some buyers request dealers to simply issue an NOC and take the car, promising to handle re-registration later. But Arhan refuses every time.
“Buyers who agree to complete registration do it, but many delay the transfer. We make them sign an affidavit committing to finish it within a set period, or the car will be blacklisted,” he said.
His concerns and precautions are mirrored by the Rohini dealer, too.
He explained that they always download Aadhaar cards directly rather than relying on copies from customers. When delivering a car, they verify the Aadhaar using an OTP and also check the buyer’s PAN and the authenticity of all documents.
However, he noted, a dealer cannot control what a buyer intends to do afterwards.
“Sometimes fake IDs slip through. There’s nothing more we can do for verification. At most, if a customer seems suspicious, we tell him to make the payment from your bank account to ours. Then we get proof that payment was made from this account. That’s all a dealer can do. If someone commits a crime after that, we can only show that the person took the car from us,” the dealer added.
The fear still hangs over the trade. The team of the dealer from Rohini is constantly tracking cars for which NOCs were issued, but registration remains incomplete. For the past two days, his team has been following up, pressing buyers on pending taxes or delays.
“Whenever we sell a car, the first step is to take the buyer’s ID and complete a thorough verification, including checking the vehicle’s history. Every individual has the right to buy or sell a car, but proper verification is essential. Awareness among car owners exists, but now the rules must be implemented strictly,” said Vikas Kumar, ACP Traffic, Faridabad.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)