Mysore, Mar. 11 (KK&DM)- In a late night operation, the Lashkar Police arrested actor Ikram Siddiqui on charges of fixing fake license plates to his Ford Endura car. He was produced before the Second Judicial Magistrate's First Class Court and charged under Sec. 486 IPC (using fake identity) and Sec. 420 IPC (intention to cheat). He has been remanded to judicial custody.

Ikram Siddiqui is the son of prominent city industrialist Mohammed Siddiqui.

The fake number plate came to light when an anonymous caller tipped off the Police Commissioner that a black car bearing this number would be coming in from Bangalore and that the number was a fake.

Later the Police discovered that a Maruti Omni car from Chikkaballapur had the same number plate. Preliminary investigations revealed that Ikram had been using this particular number (KA 40 / N 786) for the past three years.

Police Commissioner Sunil Agarwal told Star of Mysore that the Lashkar Police had spread a dragnet and were able to intercept the car and take its driver Ikram into custody. The Police Commissioner said that Ikram did not possess relevant documents pertaining to the ownership of the car. He also said that the car engine did not have a nu-mber and neither could Ikram give a convincing answer.

There are several questions that this murky episode throws up. One is why did Ikram Siddiqui, coming from a respectable and prosperous family, have to resort to fake number plates? How did he get the number of the Maruti Omni ? Why had he not registered the car with the RTO for the past three years?

Ikram had bought the car from Sriram Auto Finance under one of its loan schemes and is believed to have defaulted on repayments. One more question that surfaces is whether this was the car that was financed by Sriram Finance ? Police hope to unravel these questions in course of their investigations.