India, July 24 -- Forty-two-year-old head constable Parag Kapdanis, attached to the Kurla police station, is constantly hooked to a phone. He isn't chatting or playing games; rather, he is trying to convince people residing in far-off places to return the mobile handsets they are using, as the instruments have been reported stolen or missing, a cognisable crime. Thanks to the efforts of the policemen like Kapdanis, his zone was able to return around 634 mobile phones lost or stolen since 2023 to their rightful owners.

A police officer told HT that after the location of a person who had a stolen/lost phone in his possession was traced-which was most often out of Maharashtra-a long process began to recover the phone. "We can't go to every ...