Delhi Police bust gang of mobile smugglers, recover phones worth Rs 60 lakh

Delhi Police Crime Branch on Sunday busted an international gang of mobile smugglers, recovered 311 high-end mobile phones worth Rs 60 lakh and arrested seven people.

"Crime Branch of the inter-state cell has recovered 311 high-end mobile phones worth Rs 60 lakh. This is a rough calculation. 90 of them are iPhones, 36 of Samsung, 25 of Vivo, 15 of Oppo, 10 of Nokia, 40 of Mi and 90 other cell phones. Seven people have been arrested in the case," Rajesh Deo, DCP, Crime Branch said while addressing a press conference here.

The arrested persons are -- Naresh Kumar (30), Naresh Kumar (27), Mukesh Kumar (38), Ram Singh (58), Rajan (28), Gopal Pathak (31) and Rohit (23).

Naresh Kumar (30), left his job at a finance company and started purchasing the stolen mobile phones and further sent these to Nepal to avoid IMEI tracing. A total of 211 phones have been recovered from him.

Police had received a tip-off about the gang attempting to send these phones to Nepal, the DCP added.

"Inspector Gurmeet Singh and ACP Jasbir Singh received a tip-off that a gang is attempting to send these phones to Nepal. The lead was developed and the gang was traced for around 1 month. It emerged that Naresh is the kingpin of this gang who has opened an office in Bedanpura. He contacts with middle-men who used to collect these phones from snatchers," he said.

According to police, there was a systematic "flow".

"The Nepalese receiver had kept a salaried employ here named Ram Singh to facilitate the sending of these phones from Nepal and receiving of payments," Deo added.

However, Deo refused to divulge the name of Nepalese receiver due to "operational reasons."

The police officer further informed that the IMEI numbers of these mobile phones will be uploaded on Delhi Police Website within two days.

Asked about the reason behind sending of stolen mobile phones to Nepal, Deo explained that the IMEI search of these devices is restricted to India. The regular bus transport services made it possible for the gang to send the mobile phones to Nepal making it a high return business.

"They (accused) say that since mobile phones were getting cheaper. It is mostly bought online so repair business had gone down. So they started this job," they said.

Deo claimed that police got leads in seven other cases after the arrests.

The accused Ram Singh on interrogation revealed that the gang has been operating from last one-and-half years and around 50 phones were sent every week to Nepal.

"We are interrogating the accused in police remand," said Deo.