Cell phone theft, once regarded as a petty crime, seems to be turning into an inter-State racket.
The Mumbai Police Crime Branch has arrested two accused whose only job was to pick up stolen handsets from local thieves, get their IMEI numbers changed and take them to other States to sell them.
The Crime Branch Unit VI arrested Mansoor Suleiman (30) and Ibrahim Moiuddin (25) on Monday after three days of tracking their movements.
“We intercepted the duo at the autorickshaw stand in Mankhurd village on Monday and searched their bags, in which we found 58 handsets. The duo and the handsets were taken to the Unit VI office after they failed to provide a satisfactory explanation for having such a large number of phones in their possession,” a Crime Branch officer said.
The officer said all 58 handsets were found to have the same IMEI number, which clinched the case. “Confronted with the evidence, the accused confessed that they were taking stolen handsets to Mangalore, where they planned to sell them to cell phone traders who had bought stolen phones from them in the past. We arrested them,” the officer said.
The accused, during their interrogation, have allegedly said selling stolen cell phones in a different State is the latest tactic employed by cell phone thieves to avoid detection.
“As a rule, we ask for locations of handsets within the same city and seldom go beyond State borders. Even if we do find out that a handset is in a different State, tracking it down becomes harder. The arrested accused are not even the thieves. They had picked up the handsets from Mumbai-based thieves and got their IMEI numbers changed using software easily available in the black market as an added safety measure,” the officer said.
The accused have been charged under the Indian Penal Code, the Information Technology Act and the Indian Telegraph Act, and have been remanded in police custody till December 10, police said.
