The Malad Police have arrested two men involved in a mobile phone theft and resale racket operating in the Malvani area. The primary accused, Mohammed Faheed Siraj Shaikh (26), is notorious for sneaking into homes through open doors and stealing valuables. He was arrested for stealing three mobile phones from a residence in Malad.
Following his confession, police arrested Imtiyaz Usman Memon (46), a second-hand mobile phone dealer with a long criminal record. Upon searching his residence, police recovered 23 high-end mobile phones, suspected to be stolen.
Memon has been buying phones at cheap rates from petty thieves like Shaikh and reselling them to individuals—mostly Bengali-speaking residents and laborers in Malad’s slum clusters. Shockingly, Memon has over 10 criminal cases, including a murder conviction for which he served a 10-year prison sentence.
The theft that led to Shaikh’s arrest occurred a few weeks ago, when he stole phones from a hardware store employee’s home while they slept with the door unlocked. After filing a police complaint, CCTV footage led to Shaikh’s arrest by API Deepak Raiwade’s detection team.
Shaikh’s interrogation exposed Memon’s role in the illicit second-hand phone trade. Both suspects have now been remanded to judicial custody, and further investigations are ongoing.
