Police arrests laptop, cell phone ‘thieves’
Srinagar, Mar 6 (VOS): Police on Tuesday claimed to have arrested two persons who were allegedly involved in theft of laptops, cell phones and other IT related accessories.
The thefts had taken place in Nageen and its adjoining areas. Police said Raqib Ahmad Dar of Buch Mohalla Rajouri Kadal and Irfan Ahmad Malik of Shorgari Mohalla Nawab Bazaar, had a peculiar modus operandi to struck into.
“They were dealing with selective high profile thefts like stealing of laptops, hard drives, pen drives, cell phones. Making use of the latest means of IT, Nigeen Police zeroed on the two suspects by monitoring the MAC id’s of various seized machines and which were subsequently put to use by various operators of these seized devices,” a police spokesperson said.
He said Police Station Nigeen initially was able to recover one Lenovo laptop from the possession of Raqib Dar, who had been using this laptop after stealing the same from the premises of National Institute Technology Hazratbal.
“The laptop was pit to only a few months of usage by the said person, who had been surfing the Internet from the same laptop. Raqib used to logon to the Internet through a wireless Internet dongle. Following,  his disclosure Police were able to apprehend his  another accomplice -Irfan Malik, a computer engineer who  used to format the stolen laptops, hard drives, pen drives etc and sell these to customers,” he added.
SSP City, Syed Ashiq Hussain Bukhari revealed that the duo used to first steal the laptops and then subsequently sell the same to various customers, under the pretext that the machines are used and refurbished systems procured from Nehru place New Delhi.
The SSP said that City Zone Hazratbal was able to solve five cases of theft which had occurred over a period of three years from Nigeen and adjoining localities. “The Various recoveries made include one Macbook Pro, one IBM, two Lenovo laptops, one Acer, two Dell laptops one Sony Vaio, One 500 GB, HDD, four Compact Discs, one calculator, five Pen drives, four chargers, one Mouse and six cell phones. He also said that Hazratbal Police had also affected recoveries of some 250 mobile phones from various thieves over a fortnight. The SSP also said that they were expecting more recoveries from the duo since they have been operating in Srinagar City from the last couple of months.
Superintendent of Police City Hazratbal, Abdul Waheed Shah added that a special investigating team under the supervision of Sub Divisional Police Officer- Hazratbal, Sheikh Faisal was constituted to nab these culprits involved in the crime.