Citizens can now block, track down and recover their lost or stolen mobile phones easily if they promptly reported such incidents on the right channel!
The Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT), a telecommunications technology development centre under the Department of Telecom claims that its citizen centric portal, Sanchar Saathi, has received impressive responses from citizens who lost their mobile devices since the portal’s nationwide launch in May this year.
According to data available on the portal (https://sancharsaathi.gov.in/), almost 11 lakh (10,74,924) mobile phones were blocked after citizens reported loss/theft, of which about half (5,10,895) mobiles were traced back and 55,160 phones have been recovered and handed over to their owners.
If someone lost their phone, they must first obtain a duplicate SIM from the service provider, file a police complaint and visit sanchar saathi portal to enter details about their mobile police complaint and address as per their Aadhar and an alternative call back number. According to a spokesperson at C-DOT, once the case is reported, the system immediately alerts the concerned police/cyber crime station and telecom service providers. The moment anyone uses the old SIM or mobile, the platform alerts everyone on the network making traceability faster.
“The key is to report the matter as quickly as possible so that mobile devices can be tracked at the earliest and improving the recovery rate,” said the C-DOT representative showcasing the features of Sanchar Saathi at The Bengaluru Technology Summit, the annual tech exposition of Karnataka that began in the city on Wednesday.
As per the portal, the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCR) reported the highest number of mobile phone thefts/loss cases of more than 4 lakh (4,40,618). This was followed by Karnataka at almost 2 lakh (1,68,296) cases. People from Maharashtra reported 1,50,247 cases, while Telangana registered 1,01,793 cases. Manipur and Mizoram reported the least number of cases at 37 and 20 respectively. The portal has received more than 33 lakh (33,21,829) requests for blocking their phones and well over two-thirds (26,05,469) of the requests have been resolved, as per information available on the live portal.