2 held for replacing phones with stones

OF THE TWO HELD, ONE IS AN AUTHORISED COLLECTION AGENT OF THE COURIER COMPANY

NEW DELHI: An employee of a courier company is among two persons arrested for picking up 63 expensive mobile phones for delivery but replacing them with stones, police said.

The arrested men and their associates would use fake identity proofs to take up jobs of collection agents with courier companies, allegedly with the sole intention of misappropriating the products they were supposed to collect. The suspects would replace the items with brick pieces and stones to avoid an early detection of their fraud, said Vijay Kumar, DCP (west), in a press statement.

But with the arrest of two suspects, the police claimed to have recovered all the stolen phones, which were allegedly hidden in a godown in west Delhi’s Uttam Nagar.

The arrested men have been identified as Yoginder, 28, and Suraj, 20, both of whose first names were only revealed. “Yoginder was an authorised collection agent of the courier company. When we learnt that he was hiding in Chandni Chowk, we did a house-to-house search and arrested him,” said the DCP.

An investigator associated with the probe said that the members of this gang would use fake identity proofs to procure jobs with courier companies that are based in other cities. They would allegedly go into hiding after making a big kill before again taking up a job with another courier company.

“Since these courier companies cannot open an office everywhere, they rely on these collection agents to do the job for them. In the latest case, the courier company was based in Jaipur and Yoginder was their authorised agent in Delhi,” said the investigator.

Late last month, Yoginder took a delivery of 63 high-end mobile phones from a person based in west Delhi’s Kirti Nagar. “He replaced all of them with stones and sent them to the consignee. When the consignee found the stones, he approached us with a complaint and the two were held,” said the DCP.