How many times have you lost your cellphone? Losing a mobile phone is an experience that most of us have had and it isn’t very pleasant to deal with. You lose not just a valuable gadget, but also a lot of data (contacts, media etc). Going through the hassel of getting a new SIM card only adds to the pain. In this age of IMEI tracking and anti-theft mechanisms, shouldn’t our gadgets be well protected against theft? Well it seems that there is a technique that Mumbai police has been deploying for sometime now.
Apparently a stolen mobile can be traced back to its current owner (user) using the IMEI code of the handset. Police works with the telecom operators to track these mobiles and return stolen mobiles to its right owner. One such case came to our notice where the Mumbai Railway Police returned a Samsung Galaxy S stolen in May 2012 after 8 months. They tracked the current owner of the phone to Allahabad (UP) and got it back from him.
The story sure raises trust in the system and only reiterates that we should preserve the purchase bill / box of the device and file a police complaint upon loss of a mobile phone. Our sources in the retail market also commented affirming a crackdown on stolen phones by Mumbai Police since several years now. No used phone dealer today is ready to buy a phone without proper identity proof of the customer selling it!
Read the full story of how Mumbai Police got the the Galaxy S back here.
Annkur P Agarwal is a contributing editor with OnlyGizmos. He is also the co-founder of PriceBaba
