Slow police response hampers govt effort to recover lost, stolen mobile phones

The government’s initiative to recover lost or stolen mobile phones is hampered by the sluggish response times of police forces across various states, officials aware of the matter told ET.

“We have launched new modules on the Sanchar Saathi portal like reporting international calls with Indian numbers but when it comes to lost/stolen mobile phones, barring Karnataka and Telangana, the pace to recover phones has not picked up,” one of the officials said on condition of anonymity.

Earlier this year, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had written to chief secretaries and director generals of police of all states and union territories highlighting the slow pace of action regarding recovery of phones. The DoT had shared statistics that despite the phones being traced, a miniscule percentage of devices were being recovered.


DoT officials said through the Sanchar Saathi portal, a device can be identified and blocked. But its recovery has to be done by the police. As per data available on the portal, just 10-20% of the traced phones were being recovered, on an average.

For instance, across the country, so far, 11,12,972 mobiles have been blocked, of which 5,42,874 have been traced but only 60,060 have been recovered since the start of the service by DoT in May this year.

The percentage of recovery of mobile phones is higher in Karnataka and Telangana. In Karnataka, of the 61,611 phones traced, 19,797 mobiles have been recovered. Similarly in Telangana, of the 43,388 phones, 14,514 mobiles have been recovered.

As per estimates, the lost or stolen phone market is worth around Rs 1,200 crore with over 50,000 devices lost or stolen in a month. But with the help of the Sanchar Saathi portal, a user can block the unique identification number (IMEI) of a device making the phone unusable, even with a new SIM card. However, on many occasions, fraudsters dismantle a mobile phone and sell the parts in the grey market. In such instances, tracing the phone is not possible.

The Sanchar Saathi is a citizen centric portal, launched on May 16, by the DoT. The portal empowers citizens by allowing them to know the mobile connections issued in their name, disconnect the connections not required by them, block/trace lost mobile phones and check genuineness of devices while buying a new/old mobile phone.

The DoT has recently launched two more services on the portal wherein users can report international calls with Indian numbers and also check how many wired internet service providers are present in their locality.