The police, along with officials from Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), raided shops at Musafirkhana at Crawford Market on Wednesday. Their target: sellers of Chinese mobile phones. During the exercise, an IPR official who was accompanying the police was allegedly manhandled by the angry shopkeepers.
The police had received information from IPR office that Chinese mobile phones were being sold at the shopping center. These phones can be misused by anti-social elements as they don't have an IMEI number, making them difficult to track.
The police then assisted IPR officials to conduct a raid on these shops. "During the raid, some shopkeepers manhandled a person who was assisting police party. An offence has been registered against three shopkeepers for obstructing a government servant on duty," said deputy commissioner of police, Zone I, Vishwas Nangre-Patil.
The case is being registered and investigated by the MRA Marg police. "The raid is still on as we are yet to finish counting the number of Chinese mobile handsets seized," said Patil.
A few months ago, the Anti-Terrorism Squad had written to the customs department warning them about the possible misuse of Chinese mobile phones. The ATS asked the customs department to stop the import of Chinese mobile phones.
"The basic idea was that these phones do not have IMEI numbers, which are available in those manufactures by the branded phone manufacturing companies. Hence, it is very difficult to trace them and can be misused by terrorist," said an ATS official.
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