Forty stolen mobile phones worth Rs 7 lakh were recovered by police who arrested a two-member gang.
Mohammed Sajjad, a garage mechanic from Lingarajapuram, would snatch the phones of people walking alone on roads at night and hand them to his friend Arun, who runs a mobile phone service shop in Basaveshwaranagar. Arun would sell the stolen phones to customers in his shop and sometimes use their spare parts to service faulty devices, police said.
Koramangala police said Sajjad had stolen the phones in Koramangala, Puttenahalli, JP Nagar, Madiwala and other parts of South and Southeast Bengaluru. He was previously arrested for stealing two-wheelers and released on bail, police added.
Koramangala police inspector Nataraj D N and his team zeroed in on Sajjad while investigating a robbery reported by Yash Gaur, a college student who lives as a paying guest in KHB Colony, Koramangala.
Gaur told the police that he was talking to someone on the phone near the PG accommodation around 11 pm on October 6 when a man snatched it and ran off. CCTV footage helped the police identify the robber as Sajjad. Police arrested him and, based on his confession, picked up Arun.