Police set to use central register to track, block missing phones

HYDERABAD: The Telangana Police is introducing the central equipment identity register (CEIR), a recent technology that enables people who have lost their phones to report the same at their nearest police station, to block or trace it.

The move comes days after the Andhra Pradesh Police initiated a novel initiative of tracing missing or stolen phones and couriering the same to their owners. The Telangana Police are also seeking to improve their technological deployment.

In Ananthapur and Kurnool of Andhra Pradesh, the use of similar technology has elicited a positive public response.

Director General of Police (DGP) Anjani Kumar, discussing the implementation of CEIR, said that the move is imperative in the context of increasing cases of mobile phone thefts.

The CEIR system, introduced recently by the Department of Telecom, Government of India, is being specially introduced to identify these stolen mobile phones, he said.

 “Stolen mobile phone numbers and IMEI numbers of those phones are entered in this register and it will be easy to identify them and block those phones immediately, wherever they are in the state. A police officer will be designated as a nodal officer in each police unit. This policy will be introduced in the next 10 days,” the DGP said.

 Earlier, police refused to accept complaints of mobile phone thefts. Later, the Hyderabad Police introduced the Hawk Eye app to accept complaints and issue documents on lost/missing materials.