MTNL stumbles upon biggest copper cable heist

The theft comes only eight months after the Matunga police arrested five scrap dealers during a stakeout at night in the Dadar-Matunga area

MUMBAI: Shiv Sena (UBT) MP, Priyanka Chaturvedi, had no idea that a routine complaint about her landline connection would uncover one of the city’s biggest copper cable heists.

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The theft comes only eight months after the Matunga police arrested five scrap dealers during a stakeout at night in the Dadar-Matunga area. The scrap dealers had got daily wage labourers to impersonate municipal workers, so that they could dig up roads and foothpaths to rip up copper cables that powered phone lines from beneath the concrete.

Copper cables cost around ₹850 per kg, which is pure gold for thieves, considering that all of Mumbai was connected by landlines, via a massive web of underground copper cables, till the advent of mobile phones. The cables, of course, are still buried under the city’s streets.

Chaturvedi’s complaint, on March 22, brought officials with Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL), to Goregaon West, to figure out why her landline connection had suddenly done dead. What they discovered left them speechless.

“They realised MTNL phone lines in the entire neighbourhood were not working. When they looked further, they found several ducts open in Unnat Nagar and along S V Road, where Chaturvedi’s house is located,” said an officer with the Goregaon police. MTNL’s investigation revealed that copper cables had been stolen in eight places – 2,736 m of cabled valued at ₹12 lakh.

Goregaon police, who have registered a case of theft against unknown people, said this is one of the biggest thefts of copper cables registered by MTNL. “MTNL lodged a complaint with us and we registered a First Information Report (FIR) under Section 303 (2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, for theft,” said the police officer.

“Our preliminary investigation revealed that Chaturvedi’s phone connection was working until March 15, so the cables must have been stolen after that.”