BHUBANESWAR: In a special drive launched in the last two days, Nuapada police have recovered 104 lost or stolen mobile phones worth Rs 30 lakh, and handed them over to the rightful owners.
Around nine police stations in Nuapada district had received complaints of 150 missing and stolen mobile phones between January and April this year. District SP Gundala Reddy Raghavendra said, though they take regular steps to trace mobile phones, a special drive was undertaken by at least 20 police teams in the last two days to recover the devices.
“While most citizens reported that they had lost their mobile phones in public places, a few others complained that their devices had been stolen. After receiving the complaints, police had approached various telecom service providers and requested them to share the current location of the people using those devices,” said Reddy.
Nuapada police had also shared a WhatsApp number with the citizens to contact them in case their mobile phones were lost or stolen. The police had made the entries in the general diaries and directed them to also lodge complaints with the Central Equipment Identity Register (CEIR), a centralised database of mobile equipment identifiers. On Saturday, the district police organised a Mobile Return Mela at the office of the SP where the recovered devices were returned to the rightful owners.