Murder, fraud and theft: do premium cell phones do more harm than good?

Premium smartphones ordered from e-commerce portals have been linked to several crimes – from petty crimes to murder – reported in the city in the past few months.

While in at least one of these cases a delivery driver was the victim, in other cases it was the executives who committed or were involved in the crime.

Just in September, Bharat Kumar Verma, a 32-year-old delivery manager, was said to have been strangled to death by two to three men who had ordered two smartphones worth ₹1.5 lakh. Kumar, who hailed from Chinhat area of ​​Lucknow, was allegedly killed when he asked the accused to pay the amount for the phones. His body was stuffed into a sack and dumped in a canal.

Though two accused have been arrested in the case and one has been handed over to court, Kumar’s body has not been traced till date.

In another incident, two delivery managers defrauded a company they were affiliated with and stole 13 phones worth more than $100,000 ₹12 lakh. The case came to light when an official of Green Tech Logistics and Mobility lodged a complaint at Chinhat police station last Friday.

All the stolen phones were brand new and of a specific brand. They were either returned by customers or orders for them were canceled after purchase, police added. After taking back the delivery from customers, the duo took the phones out of their boxes and replaced them with soaps or tiles before depositing the boxes at the company’s warehouse on Satrik Road in Chinhat.

An FIR was registered against the two executives – identified as Erar of Telibagh and Momin of Cantt – at Chinhat police station on November 29 under BNS sections 316(2) (criminal breach of trust) and 318 (cheating) on ​​Shobit’s complaint Dixit, the company’s operations manager.

Chinhat railway station official Bharat Pathak said the matter was being investigated.

“The defendant committed fraud when returning products to the company. These products have either been returned by customers or orders for them have been canceled. They used to take out phones from their boxes and replace them with soaps or tiles before depositing sealed boxes at the company office,” the FIR copy said.

Likewise, four premium phones of a particular brand with a total value of ₹2.5 lakh went missing from Amazon warehouse in Banthra area of ​​Lucknow in 2023. The issue came to light only when an FIR was registered through a court order on November 25 this year.

Mohit Gaur, an authorized representative of Amazon Seller Service, told police that the missing phones were noticed by employees during the transfer of goods from the warehouse in November last year. An internal investigation revealed that four phones stored in a package were stolen. Their total price was approx ₹2.50 lakh.

Brijesh Yadav, officer in charge of the cybercrime police station in the national capital, said several such scams related to premium phones have come to light and cases have also been registered. “In some cases, it was the employees who hacked their company’s software to commit the fraud,” he added.