Chandaka Car Theft: How CCTV, Rain and a Muddy Trail Helped Police Crack the Towing Robbery| Special Report

Bhubaneswar: A blue car with its number plates hidden under black tape. A white car being dragged behind it with a heavy-duty rope. Torrential rain. Thick mud. And finally, a car-wash trail that led police from Chandaka to a self-drive rental agency and then to the doorstep of the accused in Angul.

This is how Chandaka Police pieced together the theft of a car in Andharua – a case in which scanty clues, smart CCTV tracking and a seemingly routine question about where a muddy vehicle would go next helped investigators close the loop.

The first major clue came from CCTV footage. Police spotted a blue Maruti Suzuki Swift Dzire moving through the area while towing a white Swift Dzire – the very car that had been stolen from outside a house in Andharua on the night of August 11.

The blue car's number plates had been covered with black tape, suggesting that the person behind the wheel had deliberately tried to evade identification by traffic cameras.

But the concealed registration plate did not end the trail. The heavy rain on the night of the theft provided investigators with the next clue.

The muddy-car deduction

The Chandaka Police team, led by ACP Zone VI Manas Ranjan Pradhan, reasoned that the vehicle used in the crime would have been heavily splashed with mud after moving through rain-soaked roads and forest stretches. That led investigators to a crucial question: where would the driver of such a vehicle go after the crime?

The answer was a car wash.

Police began physically auditing washing centres in the area, searching for information about a blue Dzire that had been brought in for cleaning after the night of the theft. The exercise eventually helped investigators identify the vehicle and trace its legitimate owner.

That, however, opened another layer of the mystery.

The car was not being driven by its owner. It had been rented from a self-drive vehicle agency in Khandagiri. Police then checked the rental records, where they found the KYC documents and photograph of the person who had hired the blue car.

The face in the documents matched the man seen in CCTV footage.

With the digital trail and CCTV evidence converging on the same suspect, police carried out a targeted raid in Angul on August 20 and arrested Mandeep Chaudhary. The stolen white Dzire was also recovered.

The unusual crime: stealing a car by towing it

What makes the Chandaka case unusual is the alleged method used to move the stolen vehicle.

Instead of immediately breaking the ignition system and driving away the target car, the accused allegedly tied it with a heavy-duty rope to the rear of the rented blue Dzire and pulled it away.

This is known as towing – method in which one vehicle is pulled by another using a rope, chain or specialised towing equipment. In normal situations, towing is used to move a broken-down vehicle that cannot be driven.

But in a vehicle theft, it can become an effective modus operandi.

A thief does not have to spend crucial minutes on a public road trying to break open the ignition, start the engine or bypass the locking system. The target vehicle can instead be physically pulled away from the spot and taken to a more isolated location, where attempts can later be made to start or dismantle it.

The method also helps create confusion. At night, a moving vehicle being pulled by another may not immediately attract the same suspicion as a person trying to force open a parked car.

That is allegedly what happened in this case.

The plan breaks down in the rain

According to the investigation, the accused allegedly selected the white Dzire belonging to Sudarsan Nayak, which was parked outside a house in Andharua. Using the rented blue Dzire as the pulling vehicle, he allegedly towed the car away during the night.

But the operation did not go according to plan.

As the accused moved through rain-soaked stretches, the stolen vehicle reportedly developed mechanical problems. The intense monsoon rain and the difficulty of dragging the vehicle further forced him to move it into the dense Bhola Forest area near Chandaka.

Police said an attempt was made to break the ignition lock using iron rods and pliers under the cover of trees. But the effort failed, and the vehicle was abandoned barely around three kilometres from the original crime scene.

The very weather that gave the accused darkness and deserted roads to carry out the crime also helped investigators later reconstruct the trail.

The rain created mud. The mud led police to think of a car wash. The car wash helped identify the blue vehicle. The vehicle owner led police to the self-drive rental agency. And the rental records finally put a face and name to the man seen on CCTV.

A double life behind the crime

The accused, Mandeep Chaudhary, from the Turang area of Angul district, allegedly maintained a very different image in public. He was known locally as a competitive examination aspirant and a college dropout – an outwardly ordinary identity that, police said, helped keep suspicion away from his alleged criminal activities.

But investigators found that he was far from a first-time offender.

Police said Mandeep had been released from jail barely a month before the Chandaka car theft and already had at least four pending vehicle theft cases registered against him at Lingaraj, Bharatpur and Khandagiri police stations in Bhubaneswar.

For Chandaka Police, the case ultimately became a lesson in how a crime that appeared carefully planned – from taped number plates and a rented car to the unusual towing technique – can still collapse when investigators connect the smallest clues. In this case, a few CCTV frames, monsoon mud and a routine trip to a car wash were enough to bring the entire alleged theft operation full circle.