3 'mobile thieves' arrested, 211 stolen phones recovered

Delhi Police today claimed to have busted a gang of mobile thieves with the arrest of three persons and recovery of 211 stolen phones whose IMEIs numbers were found tampered in order to avoid detection.
The three accused, identified as Md Saleem (28), Zahir Khan (32) and Amit Gulati (30), were arrested by a team of Delhi Police's Crime Branch today.
According to the police, they had received information that some people involved in mobile thefts in Metro trains and Railway stations would reach MCD market, Karol Bagh to sell the stolen phones to one Amit Gulati alias Rinku.
"Acting on the tip off, our team laid a trap. At the scheduled time, two youths, identified by the informer as Zahir and Saleem, arrived there with a bag. After sometime, Amit Gulati too came there from the market side. All three were apprehended as soon as the bag was exchanged," Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Ravindra Yadav said.

When the bag was checked, 100 mobile phones were recovered from it. On further checking, IMEI numbers of some phones were found to be tampered as the one mentioned on the sticker was different from its actual number, he added.
During further police interrogation, it was revealed that Zahir, who ran a mobile phone repairing shop at his residence, came in contact with Salim who stole mobile phones.

After committing the theft, Salim would hand over the stolen mobile phones to Zahir. Thereafter, the same were sold to Amit after IMEI numbers were changed using some software.
Amit runs a mobile phone sale-purchase counter in Gaffar Market, Karol Bagh.

"On further investigation, 63 mobile phones, whose IMEI numbers had been tampered, were recovered from Amit's counter on his instance and 48 others from Zahir's house at Nehru Vihar, Mustafabad along with one CPU used for tampering the IMEI numbers," Yadav said.
Efforts are on to link more cases using the disclosures of the accused and checking of IMEIs, police said.