Police recover, return 65 stolen mobile phones

Aarti Arora, a former school employee, was pleasantly surprised when she received a phone call on Monday morning from a police officer informing her that her OnePlus 5T mobile phone, which she had lost six months ago in Krishna Colony, had been traced. He asked Aarti to collect her phone from the office of the police commissioner.

“I could not believe that the phone had been found. I had dropped it and tried locating it by tracking the IMEI number, but gave up. Each time I passed by the area, I remembered that I had lost my phone in the vicinity. It is amazing that the police managed to find it,” said Arora.

Arora was among a group of 35 anxious people who showed up at the police commissioner’s office on Monday morning, hoping to receive their lost or stolen phones.

The police said that in the past two months, the cyber cell had recovered 65 mobile phones, which were reported missing, as part of a renewed campaign to trace phones and return them to their owners. They added that it was a step towards returning recovered phones to their owners on a weekly basis after completing legal formalities.

Muhammad Akil, the commissioner of police, said that mobile phones had become people’s “prized possessions” and represented more than just a mode of communication.

“People are emotionally attached to their phones. They have their contacts, data, bank details, passwords and memories stored in them. Phones are the most common objects that get misplaced or stolen. We file missing reports, but now we have made it a priority to trace them. A phone is not just a physical possession; people’s sentiments are linked to them,” said Akil.

Akil said that the cyber cell department would soon hire technologically proficient staff, trained in solving such cases.

“I also appeal to the people to deposit a phone at the nearest police station if they find one, or the law will catch up with them. Often, thieves dismantle phones and sell their spare parts, making it difficult to track them,” said Akil.

Some of the phones were traced from Bihar, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh, the police said. Some recovered phones were of major brands, and were traced using technical surveillance. The police said they were still segregating cases of stolen and lost phones, and did not reveal the arrests made in the cases.

The police said on average at least 10 phones were reported missing in a day in the city.

Vijay Kumar, who works in telecom, said he never thought he would get back his phone almost five months after he had lost it.

“This is the second time I lost a phone. I was on a bus and it fell from my pocket. I reported the loss at the Sector 5 police station. Earlier, I had lost a phone in Udyog Vihar. Maybe the police will find that one also,” said Kumar.

Pradeep Kumar, a constable posted at the Kherki Daula police station, said he had lost his mobile phone near the toll plaza two months ago and was happy to have got it back.

Diksha, who had come to collect her mother’s phone, had only one question to the police commissioner when she was handed the phone. “Phone toh yehi hai (this is the phone). But where is the cover?”