Rajdhani Express staffer in stolen iPhone racket

The Mumbai Central railway police on Thursday arrested a coach attendant of Rajdhani Express with his accomplice who collected stolen iPhones from a Delhi-based gang and sold them to shopkeepers at Hira Panna shopping centre in Tardeo. The police have recovered 37 stolen iPhones worth Rs15 lakh from them.   

“Pinto Prabhat Sarkar, 28, and his aide Wasim Sheikh, 27, will be produced before the Mumbai Central railway court on Friday,” said Rajendra Trivedi, senior inspector of Mumbai Central Railway Police station.

A preliminary probe has revealed that Sarkar, a coach attendant in the Mumbai Central-New Delhi Rajdhani Express, collected stolen iPhones from the gang in Delhi and sold them through Sheikh.   

On Thursday morning, when government railway police (GRP) personnel asked Sarkar about the nine iPhones he was carrying, he did not have a proper answer. On sustained questioning, he confessed to the crime. “Sheikh was arrested later from a lodge in South Mumbai with 28 iPhones,” said Trivedi.

The officer added that some shopkeepers who bought these iPhones would deliberately introduce defects in the pieces which were still under the warranty period and sent them to the company service centres. More often than not, such pieces were replaced with new ones. If the warranty period of the phones was over, they would send them to either Bangkok or Malaysia from where they would be replaced with new ones. 

“This is a well-oiled racket where persons from Malaysia and Bangkok, employees of service centres, some shopkeepers in Hira Panna shopping centre and a Delhi-based mobile gang is involved,” the officer added.