Hindustan Times ST (Mumbai) - Live
The great train robbery and recovery in city
MUMBAI: On February 12, as Sunil Rajendra Tiwari (35) stood waiting for his train at the Andheri railway station, he received a call that he had once anxiously waited for. The Government Railway Police (GRP) called to tell him that his Samsung J7 phone, which was stolen from him in a local train in 2018 during his commute to work, had been located. “I was sure I wouldn’t see my phone again. It was a present from my wife and it was very valuable to me,” said Tiwari whose phone went missing at Andheri station four years ago. Tiwari’s relief is due to the special drive launched by the GRP six months ago to locate stolen and missing phones of commuters of local suburban trains. In October 2021, the GRP formed special teams comprising a police inspector, two subinspectors and three constables of the GRP crime branch, to recover phones even if that takes them to different states. According to the GRP commissioner Quiser Khaleed, a special fund of Rs 15 lakh (from the investigation fund allotted to the GRP by the state) has been allocated for this drive. The results are already visible: Since the drive started till March-end, 4,474 mobiles have been located. By comparison, 968 mobile phones were recovered between October 2019 and March 2020.
To be sure, the number of such complaints lodged decreased in 2020 and 2021, due to the Covid-19 pandemic-induced lockdowns and the restrictions placed on all public transportation including local suburban trains. While 4,068 mobile phones were reported stolen last year, 5,097 cases were lodged in 2020. By comparison, in 2019, 24,010 phones were reported stolen; 32,476 such cases were registered in 2018.
Local trains in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region gradually opened over phases and with starts and stops, first for essential service providers and women travellers in starting September 2020 and eventually for double-vaccinated persons in August 2021. It was only at the start of this month that the state allowed unvaccinated populations to also travel by local trains. As more commuters travel, the number of mobile phones reported lost or missing has also seen an uptick. Between October 2021 and March 2022, 5,000 new cases of stolen and/or missing phones were lodged.
“We are using new methods to track and trap offenders, which is the reason for higher detection. We are even improving skills in analysing surveillance footage like facial recognition software which is available with Railway Police Force (RPF). Setting up a special fund for investigations has equipped the GRP better to travel to the interiors of the country to recover stolen phones,” Khaleed said.
Trace, track, return. A GRP circular dated August 1 made it mandatory for all police stations to register a First Information Report (FIR) for stolen phones and treat all missing phones as stolen. Earlier, FIRs were not registered for missing phones. Furthermore, the process to register these cases was made simpler: the commuter was asked to fill up a one-page form instead of filing an FIR, and provide their own details as well as the IMEI number of the handset and a description of the incident. Based on this, an FIR would be registered by the GRP police under section 392 (robbery) under the Indian Penal Code (IPC). This was made mandatory in all the 17 police stations across 112 stations on the Central, Western and Harbour railway lines. Tracking a phone once it’s stolen is not easy. Most expensive phones get sold off within hours, and travel to other states within days. An unsuspecting buyer may not realise the phone they’ve paid good money for is stolen goods. Sometimes, spare parts are dismantled and used in other phones of a similar make.
“[Since October 2021] we have traced phones from Karnataka, Bihar, West Bengal, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa and recovered phones,” said GRP crime branch inspector Ashok Holkar.
The police track a phone using its IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) number with the help of the mobile phone company. The IMEI number is a unique 15-digit number on each mobile handset — it is printed on the handset as well as the box containing the phone on purchase. It is specific to the model and make of the handset and helps the police identify the phone. Once the mobile phone is switched on, the mobile tower closest to where the phone is being used, can be located, even if another SIM card has been inserted into the phone. However, IMEI numbers can be changed by replacing the IMEI chip on the handset’s motherboard. Once this is done, the handset cannot be tracked.
Holkar said that the GRP has warned mobile shop keepers in Mumbai, Thane and Palghar districts against changing the IMEI numbers. “We have warned them that if we trace a mobile phone to the particular shop for changing the IMEI number, the shop owner would be arrested on the buying stolen property,” he said. Once a handset is traced, the police undertake a lengthy exercise of checking the mobile numbers that ping to that particular tower. They must call each number that has either made or received a call from that tower location, at different points of time, to identify the user of the stolen phone. Once they have the SIM card number (which is essentially, the cellphone number), the police ask the mobile service provider to hand over the call data record (CDR) as well as the name and the address details of the SIM card owner.
“We then call the person whose number appears several times in the call data record and ask them about the SIM card owner, as the address given while buying the SIM card could often not be specific or may even be fake,” Holkar said.
The GRP teams seek the help of local police if the phone is located outside Mumbai.
The police officers said that once a mobile phone is recovered, the officers contact the complainant from the FIR where he would have mentioned an alternative mobile number. In case the complaint is old, they request the mobile service provider to give them the CDR of the alternative number and begin the process of calling up the most dialled number, this time to track the complainant.
When the GRP officials got in touch with Tiwari, he had all but given up hope of recovering his phone that was stolen in 2018. “I couldn’t believe that I had got it back. The display is damaged but it can be repaired,” the Kandivli resident said.