They hatched a plan to steal a shipment of nearly 3,000 phones worth over a crore and sell it illegally. The six accused were successful in pulling off the theft, but a ploy by one of them to make a few extra bucks ruined their plan and landed two of them in police net. The tip-off about the miscreants reached the investigators from an unlikely place – Canada – thanks to the Internet and an online shopping site.
South District’s Special Task Force (STF) on Wednesday arrested two men — Ravi and Rajat — who were allegedly involved in stealing the consignment and purportedly recovered 1,619 of the stolen mobile phones.
They are now looking for four others, including the mastermind, involved in the conspiracy as well as the remaining 1,305 Datawind phones and tabs which left Amritsar for Delhi’s Mahipalpur on August 3, but never reached the designated address.
Missing consignment
Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (South –II) Sanjay Bhatia said the theft was reported by the owner ‘Shiva Transport Services’, which was hired by Datawind to ship the consignment. “He complained that on August 3, his driver Subodh Choudhary had left from Amritsar for Rangpuri to deliver the container loaded with mobile phones/ tabs of Datawind Company (make Jeotex), but the container didn’t reach the address the next day. The complainant said he called his driver on his mobile phone but it was switched off. Three days later, he found the truck parked in Chhattarpur but the 151 boxes of tabs/mobile phones (total no. 2,924) were missing and the driver was untraceable,” said Mr. Bhatia.
The consignment, as the probe would later establish, was taken over from Subodh by Ravi and Rajat, both drivers, and three others — Amit, Virender and Sharavan — said Mr. Bhatia.
OLX goof-up
“Rajat kept 10 mobile phones with himself without informing the others. He put them out for sale on popular online advertisement platform OLX. These are mobiles assembled by Datawind by importing Chinese parts. This particular batch of Jeotex make had not made it to the market yet and this was the first shipment out on retail. So when a Google alert on enquiries about the product, its details flashed to Datawind Canada office, they got alarmed and informed the Amritsar-based head office which in turn informed the police here,” said Mr. Bhatia.
“On Wednesday, secret information was received regarding Ravi and we arrested both him and Rajat,” said Mr. Bhatia.
