With rise in phone snatching cases, Bengaluru Police mulls IMEI block system

Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Raman Gupta said Bengaluru will be the “third city after Delhi and Mumbai to use a system to block IMEI numbers of stolen phones”.

“It is a system from the Centre for Development of Telematics. As soon as a case of phone snatching is reported, the phone will get blocked through its IMEI number and the phone cannot be used,” he added.

The Central Crime Branch unit of the Bengaluru Police recently announced the seizure of 512 phones worth Rs 78.84 lakh following the July 5 arrest of a gang of phone snatchers, which was operating across the city.

“The gang of seven to eight persons was involved in phone robberies in Bengaluru. The phones were being sold for as little as Rs 2,000 to the agents, who would sell them in Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad,” the Central Crime Branch said.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Command Centre) K. Ramarajan said the “system to block stolen phones based on the IMEI numbers is being put in place”.

“We are working on a system that will be different from other cities. Stolen and lost phones will be blocked. There will be a verification process for lost phones to ascertain the genuineness,” he added.

Some questions have, however, been raised within the police department on whether the IMEI blocking system will be a deterrent to the street crime of phone snatching.

“It may be a deterrent in the long run if there is no market for stolen phones. However, it can also lead to the police being lax on finding the criminals involved in the crime. Very often high-end phones are not snatched for resale but for harvesting their parts,” said a senior police official.

“An iPhone camera and touch screen has big value in the second market. Blocking the IMEI may only work in curbing the crime to some extent,” he added.

The Bengaluru Police has over the last few years viewed phone snatching as a lesser crime, and has not actively encouraged the registration of FIRs while preferring to put them down under a lost category in order to issue an acknowledgment that would allow the victims to get new SIM cards.

C H Pratap Reddy, the new Bengaluru City Police Commissioner, had earlier in June this year directed all the police stations to register reports of phone snatching as cases of robberies under Section 392 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

This move has resulted in a sudden spurt in cases of phone snatching in police logs.

While phone snatching cases were in the range of 8 to 15 per month from January to June, they spiked to 44 (a whopping 450 per cent) in July and there were 29 cases reported till August 22.

“Since the new Police Commissioner took over, there have been instructions to register all cases of phone snatching as robberies. We are going back to old cases registered in the E-lost category and classifying them as robbery cases if the complaint mentions a snatching. The number of cases of phone snatching remains the same in the city but the spike is due to the new classification,” said a police official.

As many as 4,000 phone snatching and theft incidents occurred in Bengaluru and the majority have been classified in the e-lost category in the past, sources said.

Earlier on February 6 this year, two unidentified men on a scooter snatched an iPhone 11 from the hands of Shruti Kharge, the wife of former Karnataka IT minister Priyank Kharge, when she was on a morning walk at around 6.45 am in the posh Sadashivanagar locality in Bengaluru.

The numbers of phone snatching cases in Bengaluru has seen an average increase by over 200 per cent in the last two months – from an average of 11 cases per month (January to June) to 36 cases per month (July to the third week of August) – after the Bengaluru police took a decision to register all cases of phone snatching as a serious crime of robbery under section 392 of the Indian Penal Code – instead of classifying them in a `lost’ category that did not earlier reflect in the crime records for the city.

One of the reasons the Bengaluru Police cites for pursuing phone snatching as a serious crime now is the fact that these crimes tend to create fear in the society regarding the safety of citizens on the streets.

“The recovery of the phone of a victim must remain a key objective of the police. This will instill confidence among people for safety on the streets. We would favour a national system where the IMEI numbers of all stolen phones are collected and alerts are issued to the police when a stolen phone is activated over blocking the phone itself which would reduce recovery efforts,” said a senior officer.

Incidentally, when chain snatching was a crime that was in its primacy in urban areas like Bengaluru a few decades ago it was not seen as a serious crime but is now viewed as a robbery, according to police officials.

In Bengaluru, the chain snatching crime is now viewed as the entry level crime that would lead to criminals moving into bigger crimes, including extortion and mafia activities. Phone snatching has replaced chain snatching as the main street crime in cities like Bengaluru.