Cellphone with the ring of truth

Two thieves, who had robbed cash and other valuables worth over Rs4 lakh from an Oshiwara flat, fled from Mumbai unaware that they had made it easy for the police to find them.

Among the booty they were carrying was a tracking device — a mobile phone with a pre-paid connection.

Ramsewak Singh, alias Raju, 24, and Sitaram, 25, had stolen Rs45,200 cash, gold ornaments and the mobile phone from Beena Shah’s residence on June 4. Singh, who had worked for Shah, went to her house saying he had to complete some job. He asked Shah for a glass of water. When Shah went inside, he and Sitaram entered the house, overpowered Shah and her 17-year-old son Het Shah, threatened them with knife and robbed the flat.

“We had no details of the robbers, except that one of them was called Raju,” additional commissioner of police (west region) Archana Tyagi said. “We questioned over 25 people. One of them said Raju’s full name was Ramsewak Singh and he belonged to Darbhanga in Bihar,” she said. A police team sent to Darbhanga returned empty-handed.

The police now had just one way of tracking them — with the mobile phone they had stolen. They were not let down. They found that the phone was being used in Delhi. But the pre-paid balance in the phone was low. “We feared that they may throw away the phone once the balance was exhausted. That would have made it very difficult for us to trace them,” Tyagi said.

The police then kept recharging the pre-paid connection from Mumbai, even as a team followed the duo’s trail. They were nabbed from Amritsar, senior inspector Kiran Sonone said.