Stolen phones worth Rs 66 lakh returned to owners in Adilabad

Hyderabad: Police in Adilabad district on Thursday, June 4, returned 330 stolen or lost mobile phones worth Rs 66 lakh to their owners, as part of an ongoing recovery drive that has reunited 1,500 victims with their devices in the past year.

The handover took place at the district police headquarters, where Superintendent of Police (SP) Akhil Mahajan distributed the phones. Most of the recovered devices had been traced to other states in North India.

Mahajan said a dedicated recovery team was constituted soon after he took charge, with a focus on helping middle-class and low-income families who had lost phones they had saved up to buy. He said the haul was the largest recovery of its kind in the district’s history.

The SP urged residents to file complaints on the Central Equipment Identity Register portal – ceir.gov.in – or at the nearest police station immediately after a phone is lost or stolen, adding that his office aimed to return recovered devices within a month of a complaint being filed.

He cautioned that mobile thefts were most common at Rythu Bazaars, bus stands, railway stations and the RIMS hospital premises, and warned of a scam in which phones are snatched from people on the pretext of making a call. He said cases would be registered against those found to be dealing in stolen handsets.