Police in Vellore district in India’s Tamil Nadu state handed 300 recovered mobile phones, worth about 6 million rupees, back to their owners. A cybercrime unit tracked the devices using their IMEI numbers.
Vellore district police returned 300 recovered mobile phones worth ₹60 lakh — about 6 million rupees — to their owners on Tuesday, The Hindu reported. The district cybercrime unit recovered the devices.
The initiative followed the creation of a cybercrime police unit at the district superintendent’s office and the introduction of a Cell Tracker application for registering complaints. Superintendent of Police N.U. Sivaraman handed the phones to their owners at his office in Vellore town.
Police monitored the missing devices’ IMEI numbers periodically. When a phone was activated again, cybercrime officers alerted its user. People who found a device, or bought it second-hand without proper verification, could hand it to police or send it by courier from another district or state.
The district police said they have returned 2,588 phones so far, with a combined value of about ₹5.05 crore. The cybercrime unit also investigated reports of missing and snatched phones.