What to check before buying a used car in Pakistan, and what each check proves

12 min read · Facts checked 2026-10-08

Check the vehicle against its papers, the papers against the register, and the vehicle against police records, all before any money moves. In order: find which excise register holds the car, pull its record, match the stamped chassis and engine numbers to the registration book, look for bank finance (HPA), read the token tax date, have it verified by police where you can, and check for unpaid challans. A clean record alone proves very little.

Each check answers one narrow question, and none proves on its own that a car is genuine. Do all of it before any money changes hands, a deposit included.

Find the register. The plate letters will not tell you which excise department holds the record.
Pull the excise record from that department.
Match the numbers stamped on the vehicle to the registration book, character for character.
Look for HPA, which on an Islamabad record means the vehicle is under bank finance.
Read the token tax date, without treating an old one as proof either way.
Have it verified against police records, in person in Punjab or by telephone through CPLC in Karachi.
Check for unpaid challans on the official system for the area.
Transfer it in person, with the seller.

Check	What it tells you	What it does not tell you
Excise record	That the register holds an entry for the plate, and what it records	That the car in front of you is that vehicle, that the papers are real, or that it is not stolen
Number match	The numbers on the vehicle agree with the papers	That the papers or the stamped numbers are genuine
HPA status	On an Islamabad record, that the vehicle is under bank finance	What any status other than HPA or HPT means
Tax paid upto	How far the department's computer record shows token tax paid	That tax is unpaid: post office payments may not reach the record
Police verification	In Punjab, a check against police records with a forensic expert report	Anything, where no verified route exists. We have not tested CPLC's line.
Challan check	Fines held on that one system	Fines held on any other system

How do you find out which register a car is on?

Pakistan has no single vehicle register. Islamabad and each province keep their own, and a plate issued in one will not appear in another. Search the wrong one and the empty result is easy to misread as no such vehicle.

The letters on a Pakistani number plate do not tell you which province issued it. Punjab, Sindh and Islamabad have each worked through the same three-letter space, each starting at AAA, so the same old-format plate can be valid in more than one register at once. Vehicles also move between registers: Punjab announced re-registration of vehicles registered outside Punjab in January 2026.

So ask the seller where the car is registered, and check with that department rather than guessing from the plate. Why the plate letters tell you so little.

How do you check a car's excise record before buying?

Each register asks for something different, and only one of them can be checked on this site.

Register	What the official lookup asks for	Can this site check it?
Islamabad (ICT)	The registration number and the registration date. There is no captcha. Get the date wrong and it returns nothing at all.	Yes, from the plate alone
Punjab	The vehicle number, the registration date and a picture captcha	No
Sindh	The registration number only, behind a Google reCAPTCHA	No
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa	A district as well as a number. We could not confirm that it works.	No
Azad Jammu & Kashmir	Nothing: the page is an under-construction placeholder	No
Gilgit-Baltistan	Nothing: the page titled Vehicle Search has no vehicle search on it	No

For a Punjab car, ask for the registration book or smart card first. It carries the registration date, which MTMIS needs alongside the plate, and the chassis number, labelled 'Chassis No.', not 'VIN', to match against the car. If the lookup fails, try a leading zero, and try the plate with and without a space. For a Sindh car, the Excise Sindh's Online Vehicle Verification takes the plate alone.

For an Islamabad car, the box below needs only the plate. We work out the registration date and ask the same public form anyone else can. The record can include the make, model, year, colour, engine size, engine and chassis numbers, registration date, assessed value and token tax status.

Check an Islamabad plate now

Islamabad is the one register we can answer, and you need only the plate. For a vehicle registered anywhere else this box will not find it, and an empty result means we did not look.

Not the Islamabad register. Several guides send people to icta.nitb.gov.pk/verify-vehicle. It verifies cards and applications, and it returns no record even for the plates the excise department prints on its own form as examples.

Every register in more detail: how to check a vehicle registration in Pakistan. Buying a bike: the motorcycle guide.

How do you check that the chassis and engine numbers match?

This is the one physical check a buyer can do properly. Read the numbers stamped on the vehicle and compare them with the registration book, character for character. For an Islamabad car, check the excise record too: the vehicle, the book and the register should all agree. If they do not match, stop there.

They are two different numbers: The chassis number and the engine number are not the same. Check each against its own entry.
Do not expect 17 characters: Motorcycles and older locally assembled vehicles often carry shorter frame numbers. Compare exactly what is printed.
Where to find the chassis number on paper: The chassis number is on the registration book or smart card, the sale invoice and the sale certificate. Where it is stamped on the vehicle varies by make and model.

If you suspect tampering. Do not try to judge it yourself. No Pakistani government or forensic body publishes a list of signs to look for, and the official checks send a suspect chassis number to a laboratory. A buyer who self-certifies and passes is worse off than one who paid for the real check.

How do you know if a used car is still on bank finance?

On an Islamabad record, look for HPA. It means Hire Purchase Agreement: the vehicle is under bank finance. The bank has to endorse the transfer form before ownership can move. The release is called HPT, and it costs nothing.

If the record shows HPA, hold your money until the bank has endorsed the transfer. There is no departmental legend for status values beyond HPA and HPT, so ask the department about anything else. More on what HPA means on a vehicle record.

Is the token tax paid up to date?

The Islamabad record shows how far token tax is paid. That date can mislead in both directions.

An old date is not proof of non-payment: The department says token tax paid at a post office may not reach its computer record, and that you have to go in to have the record updated. Ask the seller for the receipts.
A very old date carries real risk: In March 2026 Islamabad Excise announced it would suspend the registration of any vehicle whose motor vehicle tax was last paid on or before 30 June 2015, and cancel it after 15 days. It has since published a list of more than 65,000 cancelled registrations.
An entry on that list is not a verdict: The department's own title for the list is vehicles cancelled due to incomplete information and tax default, so an entry is not proof of unpaid tax. Settle it at the department before you pay.

Buying a small Islamabad car? From 1 July 2026, token tax on a private car up to 1000cc is Rs 20,000 for the life of the vehicle. Whether an owner who already paid the old Rs 10,000 lifetime amount owes the new figure is unknown: no transitional provision, notification or departmental clarification exists. More in Islamabad token tax 2026.

Why does a clean excise record not prove a car is genuine?

Because the register is a tax and title record. It does not say the car in front of you is that car, that the papers are real, or that nobody has reported it stolen. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's excise department says as much on its own lookup page.

“does not reflect the genuineness of the vehicle or its documents/informations”
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Excise, Taxation & Narcotics Control Department, on its vehicle record page, since taken offline

Registrations have been forged at the source: Between 2015 and 2018 more than 7,000 vehicles were registered in Punjab on forged documents, about 4,000 of them on fake army auction vouchers. Some were smuggled or stolen. One excise inspector was booked over it, for trusting online verification instead of verifying the vehicles externally.
Plates get cloned: Police cameras in Karachi found about 1,600 vehicles running on fake number plates, and that only covers the roads the cameras watch. A cloned plate returns a real, clean record belonging to a different car.

How do you check if a used car is stolen?

Not from a number plate, in any way you can rely on. Theft sits with the police, in systems only officers can query, and our lookup cannot answer it. Excise Sindh's lookup shows a CPLC status tile: on a lookup run on 8 October 2026 it read 'Vehicle is Clear'. A clear tile still does not prove that the vehicle in front of you is the one on the record.

Punjab: Police Khidmat Markaz, in person: You can have a vehicle checked against police records and a forensic expert report at a Police Khidmat Markaz. It costs Rs 500 for a motorcycle and Rs 2,000 for anything else, and takes about 40 minutes. Ring your nearest centre first: not every one lists the service.
Karachi: CPLC, by telephone: CPLC publishes a 24-hour line for checking a vehicle against its stolen and snatched database: 1102, 021-35662222 or 021-35682222. Have the registration, engine and chassis numbers ready. We have not tested that the line answers.
Everywhere else: We have not established a citizen-facing theft check we would send you to. Take the vehicle and its papers to a police station instead.

Do it before you pay. A vehicle identified as stolen becomes case property, and custody is decided by the case, not by who paid for the car. Getting your money back from the seller is a separate matter you would have to pursue yourself. More on checking for a stolen vehicle.

How do you check a used car for unpaid challans?

Traffic fines are not part of the excise record, and this site does not check them. Each official system covers only its own ground. The detail is in the e-challan guide.

Islamabad: Islamabad Traffic Police's e-challan page searches by vehicle number.
Karachi and Sindh: Sindh Police's TRACS challan check asks for a CNIC number and a registered mobile number as well as the vehicle registration number. Ask the seller to run it with you.
Punjab: The Punjab Safe City Authority's page asks for the registration number, in the form ABC-00-0000, and a CNIC or chassis number. It covers Safe City camera fines only. Tickets written by traffic wardens are in a separate payments system, searched by PSID number, not by plate.
Motorways, Peshawar and Balochistan: We found no citizen lookup for National Highways & Motorway Police fines and no online challan system for Balochistan. We could not confirm what Peshawar Traffic Police's challan verification page asks for.

Check the address bar. Challan searches are crowded with ad-driven lookalike sites. Every official page named here sits on a .gov.pk, .gop.pk or .gos.pk address.

What happens at transfer, and what does it cost?

Transfer is what puts your name on the register. Until it is done, the register still names the seller. The full process is in the vehicle transfer guide.

Islamabad: 30 days, and it is the buyer's job: You have 30 days to report a transfer of ownership, and the law puts that duty on the buyer, not the seller.
Islamabad: both of you, in person, plus the vehicle: A transfer needs biometric verification of both buyer and seller, plus a physical inspection of the vehicle. If the seller has died or is abroad, the department publishes what it will take instead: the heirs' documents and biometrics, or consent attested by the consulate.
Islamabad: non-filers pay three times the advance tax: Non-filers pay three times the filer rate of advance tax on an Islamabad transfer. The department's own transfer page still shows the older, lower figures, and both of its tables are stamped 2019, so confirm the amount before you budget.
Punjab: biometrics through PAK-ID: Punjab now requires biometric verification through the NADRA PAK-ID app to register or transfer a vehicle. Any transfer checklist written before 2026 is out of date.

Punjab's transfer fee is disputed by Punjab. Punjab Excise publishes two different transfer fee tables on its own website. One page gives Rs 2,750 for a car up to 1000cc; another gives Rs 4,540. We cannot tell you which figure your office will charge, so get the total at the counter.

When should you hand over the money?

After every check above, not before. Hold on to it if any of these is true:

A stamped chassis or engine number differs from the registration book by even one character.
You are not sure you searched the right register.
The record shows HPA and the bank has not endorsed the transfer.
The token tax date is very old and has not been settled at the department.
The police verification has not been done where one is available.
In Islamabad, the seller cannot attend the transfer and the department's fallback does not apply.

Common questions

Can I verify a used car online with just the number plate?

Only partly. An Islamabad excise record can be checked from the plate alone on this site. Punjab's MTMIS also needs the registration date and a captcha, and Sindh's lookup sits behind a Google reCAPTCHA. None of these records tells you whether the car is stolen or whether its papers are genuine. That needs the numbers on the vehicle matched against the papers, and a police verification where one is available.

Does an old tax paid upto date mean the seller owes token tax?

Not necessarily. Islamabad Excise says token tax paid at a post office may not reach its computer record, and that the owner has to go in to have it updated. But in March 2026 the department announced it would suspend registrations with motor vehicle tax last paid on or before 30 June 2015, so a very old date is a reason to settle it at the department before you pay.

Is the Rs 2,000 police verification in Punjab worth it?

It checks the vehicle against police records and includes a forensic expert report, which no online lookup can give you. At a Police Khidmat Markaz it costs Rs 500 for a motorcycle and Rs 2,000 for anything else, and takes about 40 minutes. A vehicle identified as stolen becomes case property, and recovering your money from the seller is a separate matter. Ring your nearest centre first, as not every one lists the service.

What should I do if the chassis number does not match the registration book?

Stop and do not pay. The numbers stamped on the vehicle should match the registration book character for character, and for an Islamabad car the excise record too. Do not try to decide for yourself whether a number has been re-stamped: no Pakistani government or forensic body publishes signs to look for, and official checks send a suspect chassis number to a laboratory.

Who has to complete the transfer after buying a car in Islamabad?

The buyer. The law gives 30 days to report a transfer of ownership and puts that duty on the transferee, not the seller. Until it is done, the register still names the seller. Both buyer and seller need biometric verification, and the vehicle needs a physical inspection. Non-filers pay three times the filer rate of advance tax, so check the current amount before you budget.