Tamil Nadu Techie Used Shared Location To Get Back Father's Stolen Phone

BENGALURU: What are the odds of finding a phone that was stolen in a moving train, especially when the thief deboarded at the next station? It seems in Raj Bhagat's case, not only luck, but technology too was on his side that he tracked the thief and caught him red-handed with the phone and many other things that the repeat offender had stolen during the course of the day.

All in a matter of two hours. "When I could see him standing right in front of me with my dad's handbag, I can't tell you how good it felt. Of course, it helped that I could read maps and that I was in a small place like Nagercoil in Tamil Nadu that I knew quite well," Bhagat told PTI over the phone.

Incidentally, Bhagat tracks data and maps professionally to aid government policymaking. In fact, his mapping expertise was used by filmmaker Mani Ratnam for his magnum opus, 'Ponnyin Selvan' in which maps are used to show the core Chola territory and the areas that were conquered and subdued, he added.

Bhagat said his father had lost the handbag containing his phone on the intervening night of 3 and 4 February, when he was probably busy looking for his seat in the

Nagercoil-Kacheguda express and settling himself, at about 1.40 am.

When his father realised his bag was missing, almost two hours had already passed. After looking around, he called Bhagat from someone else's phone with the news. Luckily, said Bhagat, his family shares location with each other and he could see his father's phone moving along the track near Melapalayam in Tirunelveli. "So, I deduced that the thief got off at Tirunelveli junction and was returning to Nagercoil in another train," he said.

Bhagat decided to take a friend along and confront the thief. "We also stopped along the way and convinced a railway police cop to come along with us," said Bhagat.

But when the Kanyakumari express, on which the thief was coming back, according to the map, pulled in, it was too crowded and Bhagat lost the thief in the crowd.