In a shocking turn of events, three policemen were arrested along with six members of a mobile phone theft gang by the Panjagutta police on Tuesday. The arrested officers—Somanna from Gandhinagar Police Station, Sai Ram from Saifabad Police Station, and Ashok, a home guard with Gandhinagar Police—are accused of facilitating a mobile phone theft operation run by a gang based in Jharkhand.
According to S M Vijay Kumar, the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) for West Zone, Hyderabad, the kingpin of the gang is Rahul Kumar Yadav, a resident of Theenpahar village in Jharkhand. Yadav orchestrated a nationwide operation, deploying his gang members across several cities, including Hyderabad, Surat, Lucknow, Ranchi, Belur, Chennai, Varanasi, Nagpur, and Patna.
The gang’s modus operandi involved targeting crowded areas like vegetable markets, Metro stations, and religious processions. The thieves would identify unsuspecting victims, often people who kept their mobile phones in shirt pockets. At the moment of distraction, a trained member of the gang would stealthily lift the phone and pass it on to another accomplice. After executing the theft, the gang would disperse to a different crowded location to continue their criminal activities.
Once the gang had stolen 50 to 60 mobile phones, they would inform Rahul Kumar Yadav, who would then dispatch another member, Mukhtar Singh, to collect the stolen phones. Singh would transport the devices back to Jharkhand, and together, he and Yadav would smuggle the phones across the India-Bangladesh border, selling them to Bangladeshi nationals.
The police also discovered that the arrested officers were helping the gang members avoid detention. Whenever the gang members were caught by local authorities, these policemen allegedly took money from the gang to help them secure bail and be released from custody.
Four additional members of the gang are still on the run, and authorities are working to apprehend them. The arrest of the three policemen has shed light on a deep-rooted corruption within the police force, where law enforcement officials were complicit in enabling criminal activity for financial gain.