PUNE, June 15: The city police has taken a serious note of the cellular phone theft cases and the possibility of their use as a potent mode of communication by criminal links. The matter will be taken up with the cellular phone industry in the city soon.

Interestingly, none of the six cellular phones stolen over the last six months have been traced so far, the reason being that the culprits have not used the instrument. Ramrao Pawar, DCP (crime) told The Indian Express that the police would soon be taking up the matter with the cellular phone companies to explore the ways to nab the culprits.

The concern comes in wake of the fact that the underworld links identified in Pune have been operating using pagers as an effective mode of communication, police sources reveal.

In Mumbai, cell phones are here to stay with the underworld, a trend which the local police fears might trickle down into the city if not curbed in the initial stage.

Firdos H Chindi, a 33-year-old interior decorator having his office located on the East Street lodged a complaint with the Bund Garden police regarding the theft of his two cell phones. A resident of Koregaon Park area, Chindi found his two cell phones kept in his brief case stolen while he was in a health club on Manekji Mehta Road yesterday.

About six months back, a trader from outside Pune who had come here on a business tour had lodged a complaint with the cantonment police stating that his cellular phone and some other articles were stolen from a room he had rented in a hotel in the Cantonment area.

Within the next two months, another cellular phone was stolen from the office-cum-residence of a city businessman at Yerawada.

Recently, the employee of a cellular phone company had lodged a complaint with the Bund Garden police stating that his two cellular phones were stolen from a posh hotel in the Pune Cantonment area.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.