Keep your phone safe, or it may end up in India

If you lose an iPhone in Bangladesh, chances are it has already been sold at an unbelievably cheaper price in one of the many states of India.

Likewise, smartphones stolen in the neighbouring country make their way to Bangladesh and are sold at far below the market price.

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.

Following coordination with Indian authorities, he received news of its recovery on March 1 and the phone was returned via parcel shortly thereafter.

Meanwhile, Religious Affairs Minister Md Faridul Haque Khan's mobile phone was stolen in Jamalpur on April 30, but was found in Malaysia a month later. Detectives investigating the incident busted a gang and seized 63 stolen mobile phones from their possession.

There are transnational rackets active in Bangladesh and India that are smuggling stolen and unauthorised mobile phones between the two countries, law enforcers found.

The issue re-emerged on June 30 when Dhaka Metropolitan Police recovered a stolen iPhone belonging to a Kolkata resident from Keraniganj, Bangladesh.

Moutusi Ganguly, an Indian resident, lost her phone in Kolkata's Park Circus area on July 26, 2023.

Her daughter, Ashmita Ganguly, tracked the phone to Bangladesh by using technology.

Nearly a year later, Shahjahanpur Police recovered the device.

Ashmita submitted a general diary to the Bangladesh Deputy High Commission in Kolkata and communicated with Sub-inspector Milton Kumar Deb Das of Shahjahanpur Police via WhatsApp.

 "I tried to track the phone 25-30 times over the last year before finally recovering it from Keraniganj. A man had purchased the iPhone for only Tk 17,000," said SI Milton to The Daily Star.

Earlier on March 7, DB arrested 10 Indian nationals linked to a cross-border smuggling group allegedly involved in trafficking Indian goods, including stolen mobile phones.

Last December, Indian authorities dismantled a syndicate smuggling stolen mobile phones into Nepal and Bangladesh, recovering 153 devices from a mobile repair shop in Ghaziaba.

The gangs primarily target high-priced cell phones in Bangladesh and smuggles them to India, Malaysia, and Thailand.

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.

Besides, there is a significant demand in Bangladesh for unauthorised mobile phones that evade customs duties and taxes upon entry.

Recently, Rapid Action Battalion arrested four members of an unauthorised mobile phone dealing gang during a raid in Narayanganj, recovering over 800 mobile phones.

Abu Taher, one of the arrestees, supplied over 2,500 mobiles to the market through his organised gang in the last one and a half months, said RAB-3

Meanwhile, State Minister for IT Zunaid Ahmed Palak, on June 13, directed the National Board of Revenue to track and take action against users of high-value unregistered mobile phones.