India Sees Breakthrough in Stolen Phone Recoveries: Karnataka, Telangana Lead, Delhi Lags Behind

Image Source: Internet

A significant milestone has been achieved in India's fight against phone theft, with the government's Sanchar Saathi portal reporting over 7.12 lakh phone recoveries since its launch in May 2023. Karnataka and Telangana have emerged as the top-performing states, each recovering over 1 lakh phones, while Maharashtra follows closely with over 85,000 recoveries. The portal, an initiative by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), has seen a remarkable surge in recoveries, with over 50,000 phones recovered in a single month in October 2025. This is a significant increase of 47% from June to October 2025, resulting in one phone being recovered every minute across the country. According to a DoT official, the success is attributed to seamless collaboration between police personnel, the DoT's Digital Intelligence Unit, and field formations. Regular capacity-building programs and partnerships with state and UT police forces have been crucial in strengthening on-ground response and operational excellence. However, Delhi's recovery rate remains a concern, with a dismal 2.87% recovery rate against the national average of 27.49%. The city's police have only recovered 16,205 of the 5,63,826 lost phones traced in the capital. A DoT official attributes this to Delhi's unusual policing structure, where the crime branch controls the entire system, leaving districts out of the process. In contrast, states like Telangana have implemented effective reward and punishment systems for police officers, resulting in a high recovery rate of over 43%. The key to recovering stolen phones lies in reporting them on the DoT's Central Equipment Identity Register (CEIR), which allows authorities to block the device's unique IMEI number. In light of the low recovery rate in Delhi, a training workshop was conducted by the DoT on the CEIR facility of Sanchar Saathi at the Delhi Police headquarters in September. The government has rolled out advanced tools to track stolen phones, but officers are still failing to make 'last-mile' arrests despite suspects being easily traceable through a single phone call. The states with the next lowest recovery rates are Bihar at 13.02%, Jharkhand at 14.57%, and Punjab at 15.29%.