Nearly 200 missing smartphones worth around Rs 50.91 lakh belonging to Noida residents have been recovered and handed over to their owners. The police has recovered these phones from parts of Delhi-NCR, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar with many of them being used by people who purchased the devices from the second-hand market.

The phones included devices which were either stolen, snatched or went missing from the possession of owners without their knowledge, the police said. Deputy Commissioner of Police (Noida) Harish Chander said, “A special initiative named ‘Operation Sahyog’ was carried out over last three months to recover these phones.”

“As many as 191 smartphones worth around Rs 50.91 lakh have been recovered and are being handed over to their owners after due procedure,” Chander said. Additional DCP Shakti Mohan Avasthy said the department had taken a database of complaints regarding mobile phones missing from May 2022.

“We ran a search of their IMEI numbers to find out which of those mobile phones are being used even now,” Avasthy told reporters. “There are mobile phones which were sold in second-hand market and were being used by people who bought it unbeknownst to them that their device was stolen,” he said.

He said the initiative was called Operation Sahyog since it required cooperation of many people who were using these as second-hand purchases.

“Sometimes when we called up the persons using such phones, they doubted our identity as police officials and only after we assured them of our authenticity did they agree to co-operate and return the phone,” Avasthy said.