CCTVs help catch cellphone thieves

Five persons have been arrested for stealing 3,200 Chinese-made cellphones worth over Rs 30 lakh from a godown at Karol Bagh, police said on Monday.

Deepak, 20, Yashwant Singh, 26, Sanjay Shukla, 24, Parmod and Nitin Tomar were arrested after Rajender Prasad Hasriya from Shalimar Bagh filed a complaint. Hasriya is a wholesale dealer of mobile phones and accessories at Karol Bagh.

Hasriya told police that 52 cartons of mobile phones were stolen from his godown on December 18.

Then suspicion fell on his employee Deepak, a resident of Punjabi Basti in Anand Parbat, as he was found missing after the incident.

He was hired two months ago and was handling the keys to the godown.

“The CCTV footage of the market was checked and a video clip showing some persons removing the cartons was found. Deepak, Yashwant and Suraj were identified during investigation,” said Additional Commissioner of Police (Central) D C Srivastava.

Yashwant, a resident of Bapa Nagar in Karol Bagh, was the first to be arrested on January 6, followed by Deepak and Sanjay.

Yashwant told police that he and his associates had stolen the cellphones. “Deepak had made duplicate keys of the godown,” Srivastava said.

Yashwant also told police that they had sold 10 cartons of cellphones to a person in West Patel Nagar for Rs 1.70 lakh, while four cartons were kept at his house.

“These stolen 14 cartons containing 700 mobile phones were recovered. The shopkeeper, Sanjay Shukla, has been arrested,” Srivastava added.

Subsequently, the police arrested Nitin while he was selling some of the stolen phones in Dwarka.

The police recovered 24 cartons containing 1,200 mobile phones from Nitin’s possession and 18 cartons from Parmod, a relative of Yaswanth.

With the arrest of the five men, the police have recovered a total of 2,800 cellphones.

4 fight over petty issue

Four men were injured after being shot at in a fight over a petty issue in Nand Nagri area of east Delhi, police said on Monday.

The incident happened on Sunday when Rinku Sahu, a resident of GTB Enclave, with his family and friends went for lunch at Parul Hotel in Nand Nagri.

“They entered into a heated argument over a petty issue with a two persons — a father and a son — at the hotel. The issue then went out of control and almost a dozen people started bashing each other,” a senior police officer said.

The injured, identified as Rinku, Praveen, Pawan and Bijender, were rushed to the GTB Hospital.