Han Ximin

    ximhan@126.com

    A MAN who is suspected of stealing a Mobike and driving it about 650 kilometers to Hunan Province, has been ordered to cooperate with a police investigation after the Spring Festival holiday.

    The man, surnamed Yin, was spotted by other drivers at the service station of an expressway in Shaoguan, Guangdong Province, on Saturday. Police contacted the driver after receiving reports from netizens online.

    Yin admitted that he had used a Mobike in Longhua on Friday, but denied carrying it in his truck. However, the image of the journey recorded by the GPS tracker installed on the ride-share bicycle and provided by the Mobike operator showed it started moving at 5 a.m. Saturday and entered Hengyang in Hunan Province, 650 kilometers from Shenzhen, on Saturday afternoon.

    In a second contact, Yin admitted to the police that he had carried the bike in his truck, but he said he realized it only when he received the phone call from the police because he had asked his friend to take it out of his truck.

    Yin sent the bike back to Shenzhen by a bus service on Monday. When police got the bike in Bantian yesterday morning, they found that the lock had been intentionally broken.

    Xiang Hui, deputy chief of the Legislative Affairs Office of Shenzhen’s traffic police bureau, said that a bicycle thief could be put under administrative detention for five to 10 days, or detained for up to 15 days in serious situation, and fined 500 yuan (US$73). If the bicycle is worth more than 3,000 yuan, the suspected thief could be criminally charged and face a jail term of up to three years if found guilty.