Delhi Police bust interstate, cross-border syndicate trafficking stolen mobile phones; 3 held

New Delhi, Sep 3 (PTI) Delhi Police has busted an organised syndicate engaged in the trafficking of stolen and snatched mobile phones to neighbouring countries and arrested three of its active members, including the alleged kingpin, an official said on Wednesday.

Police have arrested Motahar Shekh (33), his brother Abdul Shamim (22), natives of Malda in West Bengal, and their associate Mohammad Gulu Shekh (33).

"Acting on a tip-off on Tuesday evening, a team of Special Task Force laid a trap near Waste to Wonder Park at Sarai Kale Khan and intercepted the trio around 7.15 pm when they were moving suspiciously," Deputy Commissioner of Police (Southeast) Hemant Tiwari said.

The officer further said that on searching them, the police recovered three country-made pistols with six live cartridges and three bags containing 228 expensive mobile phones.

Preliminary interrogation revealed that Motahar was the main handler and kingpin of the racket. He, along with his associates, procured stolen and snatched mobile phones from street criminals across Delhi at throwaway prices. The gang then routed the devices through carriers and middlemen to Nepal and Bangladesh, where they fetched high profits.

"This syndicate was fuelling street crime in the city by creating demand for stolen phones and simultaneously running an illegal cross-border trade. With their arrest, a major interstate and international racket has been unearthed," the DCP said.

Police said the accused are natives of Malda in West Bengal, which has emerged as a hub for smuggling of stolen devices to neighbouring countries.

Their network spanned across multiple states, and further investigation is underway to trace local suppliers and international receivers of the consignment.

The recovery of arms and ammunition also indicates that the group was operating with a high level of preparedness to resist police action.

A senior police officer said the stolen mobile phone racket has taken a sharp cross-border turn due to a government tool meant to protect consumers — the Central Equipment Identity Register (CEIR) — which is inadvertently fuelling a smuggling pipeline that dispatches thousands of snatched handsets to Nepal and Bangladesh.

Delhi Police have recorded over 20 arrests in 2025 so far, unearthing networks that collect stolen phones from across the capital and ship them through couriers, buses, and border routes in Bihar and West Bengal.

"The surge is directly tied to CEIR, which makes handsets unusable on Indian telecom networks once blocked. The system leaves thieves with no viable resale market inside the country and pushes them into cross-border smuggling syndicates," said a police officer, who requested anonymity.

The officer said that while CEIR has significantly reduced street-level resale of stolen devices in Delhi, it has unintentionally created strong incentives for organised gangs to look abroad.

"Earlier, a stolen phone would circulate in grey markets of Gaffar or Nehru Place. Now, once the IMEI is blocked, it is nothing but dead weight here. The only way to monetise it is to move it to a jurisdiction where India's blacklist does not apply. Our teams are also working round the clock to trace such smugglers and to arrest them," the officer explained.

Recently, the Delhi Police had arrested eight men linked to a south Delhi module accused of smuggling phones into Bangladesh. Investigators said the syndicate operated like a supply chain: thieves handed over devices to local receivers, who consolidated consignments within hours, and couriers then rushed them to border states.

Police seized 294 handsets worth nearly Rs 50 lakh, describing it as one of the largest hauls this year.

The August arrests followed a string of earlier cases in which Delhi Police intercepted phones mid-transit to Nepal or Bangladesh.

In January, a 36-year-old engineering graduate was caught in Wazirabad with a cache of 195 handsets allegedly stockpiled for dispatch abroad. In February, two men were booked for funnelling stolen phones to handlers in Bihar's Munger and West Bengal's Malda, which serve as staging posts for onward smuggling.

March saw back-to-back seizures. On March 9, a 24-year-old courier was held near Salimgarh Bypass with 48 devices linked to a Bangladesh-bound network.

A week later, a 45-year-old named Nadeem was stopped at ISBT Anand Vihar while boarding a bus to Nepal with 32 premium phones, including iPhones and high-end Android sets. The Nepal route surfaced again in July, when a Karol Bagh shopkeeper described as an "international supplier" was arrested with 42 phones.

According to the police, the consistent pattern is simple: once an FIR is filed and CEIR is invoked, the blocked handset has little to no value within India. But just across the border, the phone functions as if nothing happened. That differential creates an immediate arbitrage opportunity.

"CEIR is a brilliant tool domestically — it empowers victims and shuts down black-market resales. But it is also precisely why criminals are racing to move devices out of India. In Nepal, Bangladesh, or even beyond, those IMEIs are not blacklisted. The phone lights up, it connects to networks, and it sells at 70 to 80 per cent of market price," another senior Delhi Police officer said.

The CEIR mechanism itself was launched by the Department of Telecommunications in 2019 and rolled out nationally in 2022 to curb mobile theft. By allowing both police and the public to block a stolen phone's IMEI number, it ensures the handset cannot be used on any Indian network even if the SIM card is changed. Consumers can file complaints through the Delhi Police website, and once the IMEI is flagged, the device is considered a dead device inside India.

Police also said that many victims fail to note or preserve their IMEI numbers, delaying blocking requests and complicating investigations. The Ministry of Home Affairs and Department of Telecommunications have repeatedly urged citizens to record their IMEIs, store them securely, and verify second-hand phones before purchase. PTI BM HIG