BENGALURU: The Peenya police have arrested an engineer who had stolen Universal Baseband Processing Unit (UBBP) worth Rs 30 lakh installed in mobile network towers. Police said the supervisor of a private firm that installs UBBP cards in mobile network towers, had filed a complaint about the theft of two cards from a tower located on Nelagadaranahalli Main Road. The police verified the CCTV footage and zeroed in on the suspect’s vehicle number, based on which he was arrested.
“Investigation revealed that the accused, who hails from Kalaburagi, had completed his ITI training and worked as a site engineer with the company that had installed the UBBP cards. Six months ago, he was sacked due to financial crisis induced by the pandemic. As he had no income, he stole the cards. The accused had stolen 19 cards in Bengaluru and Ramanagara, but he could not sell them as people had no idea about the cards. Hence, he had sold seven cards to scrap dealers for Rs 500 and had kept 12 cards, as he looked for other customers. We have recovered 19 UBBP cards worth Rs 30 lakh. Nine cases of theft have been solved with his arrest,” the police added.