Guess how many mobile phones were stolen on Mumbai’s suburban locals in 2013? A staggering 1,045. And these are only the cases where the victims filed a written complaint with the police. Almost an equal number of mobile phones have been reported stolen from the streets of Mumbai — snatched from running auto rickshaws, BEST buses, in crowded streets and on deserted roads. The numbers are rising. And city’s police force is clueless about how to stop this menace.

Illustration and Graphic/ Amit Bandre

According to data available with the Government Railway Police (GRP), theft of expensive smartphones has seen a steep rise in the last two years. When the GRP caught a gang of thieves employed with the Indian Railways, inside the Mumbai-Delhi Rajdhani Express with over 30 mobile phones, it confirmed the data.

Railway rogues on government rolls
On January 22, the Mumbai Central GRP cracked a mobile stealing racket when they caught railway employees inside the Rajdhani express with several models of I-Phones and Samsung smartphones. The lid of the racket was blown off with the arrest of a train attendant called Pintu Sarkar, 26, who had 10 I-Phones with him. “During the course of investigations we caught another man who used to deliver these mobile phones to the grey market after cleaning the data,” said Rajendra Trivedi, senior PI, Mumbai Central GRP. The associate, Wasim Shaikh, 25, was arrested. Twenty-seven high-end Android and I-Phones were recovered from him.