KARACHI: The police on Tuesday claimed to have rounded up five members of a gang involved in smuggling snatched phones to Afghanistan and Bangladesh after changing their IME numbers.
The police on a tip-off conducted a raid near Gulshan-e-Hadeed, Malir, and arrested five members of an organized group involved in street crimes and smuggling of cell phones. The racket was involved in changing the IME number of the snatched phones from Karachi and was smuggling the same to Afghanistan and Bangladesh. More than 70 costly snatched phones were recovered after the identification of the arrested accused.
Laptops, USBs, and devices used to change IME numbers of the phones were also recovered from the custody of the arrested outlaws. In May, the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC) had released a report on street crimes committed in April 2020 in Karachi.According to statistics compiled by the CPLC, overall 2,000 motorcycles were snatched or stolen, while 832 Karachiites were deprived of their mobile phones by street criminals. At least 27 people were killed in Karachi during the outgoing month, whereas, 69 four-wheelers were either snatched or stolen from the city. NNI