Recovering lost, stolen handsets remains a challenge!

Losing mobile phones is perhaps as old as the launch of handsets itself, but despite the rapid advancement of technology, recovering lost/stolen handsets remains as hazardous and nearly impossible a challenge as it was decades ago.
Despite earnest efforts by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), the performance of the administration to recover lost or stolen mobile phones leaves much to be desired, thanks to sluggish reaction by the police in different states, The Economic Times has stated in a report quoting officials seized of the matter. On an average, only 10-20% of the handsets lost or stolen are recovered.
The IT capital of the country, Karnataka, and one of the youngest states, Telangana, are better performers on this score in a land marked by procrastination by the police, it stated.
“We have launched new modules on the Sanchar Sathi portal like reporting international calls with Indian numbers but when it comes to lost/stolen mobile phones, barring Karnataka and Telangana, the pace to recover phones has not picked up,” one of the officials said on condition of anonymity.
To address the problem of locating and recovering lost/stolen mobiles in early 2023 DoT had written letters to chief secretaries and director generals of police of all states and union territories. The purpose of the communication was to flag the extremely slow pace of police action necessary for the recovery of handsets. According to the DoT, though a large number of phones are successfully traced, recovery remains a very small fraction of those traced.
Incidentally, mobile phones, lost or stolen, can be traced and blocked. But the sole authority of recovering it lies with the police. Data on this portal tells that 10-20% of the handsets traced are recovered on an average.
The service was launched by DoT in May 2023. Since then, 11,12,972 mobiles were blocked. The number of handsets traced stood at 5,42,874. However, a mere 60,060 – or 11.06% — have been recovered so far.
The share of handsets recovered is higher in Karnataka and Telangana. In Karnataka, 32.13% of the phones traced were recovered – out of 61,611 phones traced, 19,797 were recovered. Telangana police is the top performer in the country recovering 14,514 mobiles of the 43,388 phones traced – or 33.45%.
The Sanchar Saathi portal helps one to block the unique identification number (IMEI) of a device making the phone unusable. Even if one loads a new SIM card in a handset thus blocked, it cannot be used. Often in such situations, thieves take out parts of the handset and dispose of the parts in the grey market making it impossible for the handsets to be traced.
Estimates put the lost/stolen phone market to the tune of Rs 1,200 crore. More than 50,000 handsets are stolen in a month.