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Gang stealing telecom equipment busted, 8 held
Stolen items were being sold in Delhi which were further sent to Chennai or other port cities to be transported to Gulf countries and Philippines.
The Patiala police on Tuesday claimed to have solved over 60 cases of theft by busting an interstate gang involved in stealing highly sensitive telecom equipment from mobile towers of private operators, such as Airtel, Vodafone and Reliance Jio. As many as eight members of the gang have been arrested. Telecom equipment worth over ₹1.5 crore have been recovered from them.
Addressing a press conference here, SSP Varun Sharma said the recovered items included 56 remote radio units (RRUs), 2 base transceiver stations (BTSes), and 53 BTS cards.
The arrested men have been identified as Subhash Kumar, Jatinder Kumar, Nawajis Khan, Jaswinder Singh, Harbans Singh, Bhinda Singh, Mohit Kumar and Gaurav Sood. All were arrested from Kauli village of the district on June 9.
It has been learnt that the accused are repeated offenders as they are facing several theft cases. Some of the accused have been arrested in the past, the police said.
The SSP further said that most of the arrested thieves have in the past worked in mobile tower maintenance companies. “A few of them are highly trained who can climb atop over 100-metre tall mobile towers and remove sensitive and high-end equipment in just a few minutes,” said the SSP.
According to SSP Sharma, the gang had been selling the stolen items in Delhi which were further sent to Chennai or other port cities to be transported to Gulf countries and southeast Asian countries. “These items were sent to Dubai, Oman, UAE in the Gulf and Philippines in southeast Asia where these were refurbished to be again sold to private telecom operators therein,” said the SSP.
Meanwhile, Patiala crime investigation agency (CIA) in-charge Shaminder Singh said the mastermind of the gang was Subhash Kumar, who has earlier worked in a mobile tower maintenance company for nearly 20 years.
“This gang has stolen equipment from over 60 mobile towers from different places in Patiala, Rajpura, Faridkot, Abohar, Fazilka and Bathinda. During the police investigation of the arrested accused, it has also come to the light that some e-commerce websites are purchasing these equipment online,” he added.
