India, April 25 -- Shiv Sena (UBT) MP, Priyanka Chaturvedi, had no idea that a routine complaint about her landline connection would uncover one of the city's biggest copper cable heists.

The theft comes only eight months after the Matunga police arrested five scrap dealers during a stakeout at night in the Dadar-Matunga area. The scrap dealers had got daily wage labourers to impersonate municipal workers, so that they could dig up roads and foothpaths to rip up copper cables that powered phone lines from beneath the concrete.

Copper cables cost around Rs.850 per kg, which is pure gold for thieves, considering that all of Mumbai was connected by landlines, via a massive web of underground copper cables, till the advent of mobile phones....