JOIN USThe city police have busted a mobile phone theft racket by arresting the leader of the network. The suspect is Arif Pasha, 40, of Goripalya.
The police also arrested Suber, 45, of Palakkad in Kerala. Suber owns a phone store in Palakkad. He would receive stolen phones from Arif and resell them. The police recovered 402 stolen mobile handsets, worth Rs 40 lakh from them.
Arif operated the network through five men in the city. They operated only in packed BMTC buses during peak hours. They would rob passengers of their handsets and get down at the next stop. They had lifted 53 iPhones, 87 Samsung, 35 Sony, 50 Micromax, 20 HTC, 16 Lenovo, 10 Motorola, 10 Karbonn, 17 Nokia, 8 LG and 170 handsets.
Arif would pay his men for lifting the handsets. One of Arif’s men was nabbed by the police while attempting to lift a phone from a passenger. During interrogation, he told the police about the network.
“Based on his inputs, the police raided Arif’s house and recovered 165 phones. Arif led the police to Suber’s store and they recovered 237 phones,” K S R Charan Reddy, Additional Commissioner of Police (West) said.