Charged with mass cell phone theft to gather evidence

Mulavukad police on Saturday (October 26) took four accused to various places to collect evidence in connection with the alleged mass theft of mobile phones at an international artist’s concert in Bolgatty.

The police have taken into custody the accused Atiq Ur Rahman and Waseem Ahammed, who were arrested in Delhi, and Sunny Bhola Yadav and Shyam Baranwal, who were arrested in Mumbai. They were taken to the two tourist houses where they were staying and to the Bolgatty Palace, where the concert was held on 6 October.

“The focus will now be on detailed interrogations based on call data records and contacts on their phones. We will have to extradite one pair of the accused on October 30 and the other the next day,” police sources said. Police may question them together or separately to uncover conflicting and self-relevant information.

All four of the defendants were history writers. Police are also searching for the remaining four accused; the two belong to Delhi and Mumbai gangs respectively. It has been reported that history reporters from Mumbai travel to and from Kochi by plane, while those from Delhi travel by train. This was the first large-scale mobile phone theft from a single location in Kerala. It was still being confirmed whether more gangs were involved in what the police perceived as a well-planned operation.

Police seized a total of 24 mobile phones, including 20 from Delhi and four from Mumbai. It was determined that 7 of these belonged to people who lost their phones during the concert. However, the owners will have to get the phones back through court. Approximately 39 phones, including 21 iPhones, were stolen at the concert, mainly from VIP and fan areas.

Twenty phones were stolen in a similar manner at the same artist’s concert in Bengaluru before the tour reached Kochi on October 6. Investigative teams of Kochi city police inspected several shops in both Delhi and Mumbai.