At first glance, it was a stylish Mercedes A-Class, and no one had any reason to doubt that the new red car racing through the roads of Northern Kerala was anything else.
But it turns out to be a Maruti Baleno, a wannabe Mercedes, which was heavily modified to look like the luxury car.
The Regional Transport Officer (RTO) of Tirur in Malappuram District has confiscated the car in question which was illegally modified.
According to authorities the original owner of the car had modified it, replaced the bumper, with a Mercedes Diamond grille, alloy wheels, head and tail lamps and sporty air vents and logo to the point that even Mercedes dealers found it difficult to identify it as an imposture.
The RTO began the investigation after the state transport commissioner received a complaint.
But it took the authorities nearly two weeks to nab the imposture Merc which was hidden in the showroom of a second-hand car dealer.
According to authorities, the owner had put up the car for sale after he got into trouble with the law for the illegal modification.
Finally, with the help of police, the RTO managed to seize the Baleno and issued a show cause notice to the owner who is said to have spent up to Rs 3 lakhs to make the alterations in which was done in a local workshop.
Tirur RTO told a local TV channel that the car's registered owner who had purchased it had sold it to a friend without changing the registration. The friend who bought the car and modified it to look like Merc.
It was later sold to a third party who was using the Baleno at the time when it ran into trouble. It was a fight between the registered owner and the modified owner which alerted the authorities leading to the confiscation.
After the owner agreed to remove the modification, the authorities have decided not to deregister the car and let him off with a fine.
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