Mumbai Police Recovers 25 Missing Mobile Phones, Returns Them To Their Owners

The Deonar police have managed to trace at least 25 missing mobile phones of citizens which they had lost at least a year ago.

The cyber cell of the police station began looking into missing mobile cases three to four months ago. “These are not snatching or theft cases, per se, but the ones where citizens have lost their mobile phones, either while travelling or misplaced them unknowingly. We started looking at those devices and their current whereabouts,” said Rajesh Kevale, senior police inspector Deonar police.

Technical analysis and ground work

He added that the cyber cell initiated the investigation in this regard, first by procuring Subscriber Details Record (SDR) and Call Details Record (CDR) of the lost mobile phones. Based on the same, there began the technical analysis managed by the cyber team, while the other police personnel began the ground work, physically. Out of the 25 phones, 5 were traced out of Mumbai and 5 from out of Maharashtra. The 10 phones were somewhere in different areas of the city itself, he explained, adding that all the phones together cost up to ₹4 lakhs.

In cases like these, whoever either stole the phone, or picked it up randomly, tends to sell it off at half-prices to local road-side shops who then resell it to customers at minimal prices.

“The customers don’t know what they are getting into, so it’s not their fault. The shopkeepers are anyway looking for profit buying, hence in cases like these there are no arrests made as this business works like a syndicate in flea markets (chor bazaar) rather than wholesale, or retail in a sophisticated manner,” further explained Kevale.

Cops meet current users to get back the phones

Cops personally met the current users, took the phones and returned it to the original owners. When it was returned to the people by the police on Tuesday, many of them were shaken as they didn’t expect to get their phones back.

—-freepressjournal