Mumbai GRP’s CMTU recovers 2,748 missing cellphones

Stealing a march over other GRP branches in the state, the Mumbai Government Railway Police (GRP), late last year, formed a Centralised Mobile Tracing Unit (CMTU), which, till September this year, has managed to recover as many as 2,748 missing mobile phones. That’s not all. After learning that 87 of these mobiles were actually stolen, the unit registered FIRs against unknown persons in respective police stations and returned a majority of the phones to their owners.

Former CP Ravinder Singal formed the unit last September and his successor Madukar Pandey continued with it. This was a crying need considering this year, as many as 29,927 cellphones worth crores of rupees went missing on railway premises. The team of nine policemen led by assistant inspector Ritesh Ahir aggregated files on missing mobile phones from all 17 GRP police stations and collated them as per mobile services used by the victims. A list of International Mobile Station Equipment Identity (IMEI) numbers of these mobile phones was also drawn up. “But the thieves change IMEI numbers nowadays and hence we feel there is a requirement of making the system more strong,” said Mr Ahir. The unit first found out the state in which the mobile phone had been robbed and once the number went above four or five, a special team was dispatched to bring the phone back. Till date, many such teams have been deployed to Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Delhi and even Assam and have managed to retrieve several mobile phones from these states.

However, it is not always practical for the GRP to send its teams chasing people involved in cases of missing cellphones that are worth just a few thousand rupees.