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Lost in Kerala, found in Kamrangirchar

Police recover 207 smuggled smartphones; 2 siblings held
MUNTAKIM SAAD
Nearly four months back, an Indian medical student, Shaheen Rawshan, lost his iPhone 15 Pro Max in Kerala. After about three months, he tracked its location to the East Rasulpur area of Kamrangirchar in Bangladesh.
As he contacted a police official of Lalbagh Division of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, a team of Kamrangirchar police recovered his iPhone from a house in East Rasulpur and arrested two siblings in this connection.
Police also recovered 207 smartphones -- including 138 iPhones smuggled from neighbouring countries, including India, by evading customs duty -- one MacBook and Tk 94,000 during a drive on July 3, Imran Hossain Molla, assistant commissioner of Lalbagh Zone, told The Daily Star.
The matter came to the fore yesterday after the DMP provided a press release in this regard.
The arrestees are -- Shakil, 24, and his brother Shahin, 21.
“They [Shahin and Shakil] used to buy these stolen mobile phones from different people in different cities of India like Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kerala and smuggled them into Bangladesh illegally by evading customs duty and would sell them,” the police official said.
Such smuggling of stolen smartphones has become frequent nowadays, with several incidents reported of recovered stolen smartphones in both India and Bangladesh.
On June 30, a team of Shahjahanpur police recovered a stolen iPhone belonging to a Kolkata resident from Keraniganj, which she lost in the Park Circus area nearly a year ago.
On November 7 last year, Ferdous Miah, a deputy jailer from Dinajpur, was robbed in Dhaka’s Dhanmondi area, losing his Samsung S23 Ultra mobile phone.
After filing a GD and using a tracking app, he located the phone months later in Gujarat, India.
There are transnational rackets active in Bangladesh and India that are smuggling stolen and unauthorised mobile phones between the two countries, law enforcers found.
High-end phones like iPhones, known for their hard-to-alter IMEI numbers, are risky to sell locally, so criminals smuggle them in a different country, according to law enforcers.
Besides, there is a significant demand in Bangladesh for unauthorised mobile phones that evade customs duties and taxes upon entry.
Imran said Shaheen, an Indian citizen of Kerala, lost his iPhone on March 27. Later on July 2, he contacted him for recovery of the phone.
On July 3, Kamrangirchar police raided the East Rasulpur house and recovered 190 smartphones including 138 iPhones. Based on their information, they raided a shop in Orchard Point shopping mall in Dhanmondi and recovered 17 more smartphones.
A case was filed with Kamrangirchar Police Station under the Special Powers Act following the drive.
The police official said the arrestees maintained communications with multiple contacts in different countries, including India, exchanging information and smuggling smartphones from neighbouring countries.
The investigation uncovered videos, photographs of parcels containing smartphones, and various details related to the illegal sale of stolen mobile phones, he added.