Rising Car Thefts In India: Maruti Suzuki WagonR Becomes Favourite For Robbers

India’s national capital, Delhi tops the list with the most stolen vehicles.

Our national capital, Delhi, tops the list for the city with the most recorded vehicle robberies in 2023 with a 37% share of the total number of stolen vehicles in 2023, where a vehicle is stolen every 12 minutes, with Uttam Nagar, Bhajanpura, Shahdara, Badarpur and Patparganj being the most robbery prone areas in the city.

As stated by the 2023 vehicle theft report, the WagonR from Maruti Suzuki is the most stolen car in India surpassing the Swift and Dzire, also from Maruti Suzuki, followed by Hyundai’s Grand i10, Santro, and Creta as well as the Honda City.

India is experiencing extreme growth in robbery rates with bike theft becoming more than nine times more common than car robberies. Hero Honda’s Splendor was recorded as the most stolen bike of 2023, followed by the Honda Activa, TVS Apache and the Royal Enfield Classic 350.

The Gurugram Police Department stated that “six out of 10 bikes stolen is a Hero CD Deluxe, Hero HF Deluxe, Hero Splendor or Hero Splendor Plus due to the high resale value and high demand for spare parts.”

The report also shows that White cars were the most stolen colour and that Bangalore holds 9% of the list, followed by Chennai with 5% and then other cities like Hyderabad, Mumbai and Kolkata following, with Delhi recording more than 3lakh cases yearly.

Drivespark Thinks

The increasing rates of car theft are extremely unfortunate, however, there are ways to protect oneself. For example, make sure you have insurance for your vehicle, lock your doors, park in safe areas where the vehicle is visible, use anti-theft alarms, wheel locks, or steering locks.