Three months after he lost his mobile phone, Preetish from the city lodged a police complaint a few days ago with the least hope of getting it back. To his surprise, the next day, the city police traced his mobile phone to Udupi and handed it over to Mr. Preetish on Thursday at the Police Commissioner’s office.
Mr. Preetish was one among 39 people whose lost/stolen mobile phones were traced and handed over to their owners at the Commissioner’s office. It was all because of the Central Equipment Identity Register (CEIR) portal — ceir.gov.in — of the Union Department of Telecommunications (DOT), said Commissioner Kuldeep Kumar R. Jain.
Mr. Jain told reporters here that police stations in the Commissionerate had received 402 requests for blocking mobile phones after they were either stolen or lost since about five months. Of them, 124 have so far been traced and 39 were recovered with the help of the portal, he said.
Before the portal was launched, there were very few chances of lost phone recovery. The normal way was to extract further information from a mobile phone lifter upon his/her arrest in one case and get some more instruments. Whenever a person approached the police with the mobile phone lost complaint, police used to give an acknowledgement often. Now the system has changed completely with the portal.
Details, including the IMEI number, would be uploaded onto the CEIR Portal and the phone gets blocked once a complaint was lodged with the police by the owner. Enforcement authorities would immediately get notified and could track the device whenever someone attempts to use the phone through another SIM. CEIR also ensures lost/stolen phones were not used for illegal activities thereby helping enforcement agencies.
Owners could either upload the details on CEIR portal after obtaining an acknowledgment for their police complaint or leave it to the police to trace the phone.
Deputy Commissioners of Police Anshu Kumar and B.P. Dinesh Kumar were present.
