Cellphone thefts on rise in Visakhapatnam city

Visakhapatnam: The incidents of mobile phone theft were alarming in the city during the last one year. The costly mobile phones which cost between Rs 10,000 to Rs 1 lakh were the prime target of mobile phone lifters and offenders. At every police station including Railway Protection Force in the city there are more than 50-60 cellphone stolen cases pending till date.

According to the sources, it came to know that all the stolen phones were brought by the offenders to local markets at Dabagardens and Dwarakanagar areas in the city. The youth aged between 20-28 years will reach the open markets in the name of exchange. There are over 90 shops in Dabagardens area which has a technology of changing the IMEI number of mobile phone and motherboard cloning.

When The Hans India correspondent interacted with some traders at Dabagardens area, it was revealed that some college students bring various mobile phones costing over Rs 20,000 without bills in the name of repair and exchange them with new ones.

Due to heavy competition among stores and as those stolen phones will be priced at cheaper rate, the traders also not much bother about basic formalities like bill and other aspects and simply exchange them and those parts of stolen ones will be fixed with other mobiles.

While many victims complained against police in the past alleging that many police stations in the city is not filing FIR on mobile thefts even after a complaint was lodged, this caused a tough time in claiming insurance for the victims.

The insurance firms without FIR copy, they never consider claim of mobile phone. Soon after police department countering to all such allegations, facilitated such victims can lodge a complaint with bill and IMEI number of lost mobile phone at any mee-seva centres and can directly collect their complaint registration acknowledgement. With that receipt, they can claim insurance for their theft mobile.

A senior police officer, on a condition of anonymity, said they will trace the lost mobiles with the assistance of ‘Tech Cell’ in which the lost mobile should be turn it on for a minimum of 3 minutes than they can trace the exact location of lost mobile through technology. 

He also agreed that finding of lost phone parts after dismantling from original mobile would be highly impossible. Filing FIR of every mobile theft complaint will leads to hefty process as in some cases the mobile phones which were misplaced also has been complained as stolen, due to that investigation process of other major crime cases will be held up, he added.