Peshawar sees uptick in phone snatching

With taxes on imported phones at an all time high, a mobile phone purchase can be equated to purchasing an ounce of gold and this is what makes them mouth watering prospects for thieves in the provincial capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (K-P).

The upsurge in the exchange rate of the dollar means that some higher end phones are now worth well over Rs 300,000 and with inflation and unemployment expected to worsen, the rise in street crime will see a drastic rise. Resultantly, the most commonly sought items for organised street crime groups will be cell phones. Although there’s a scarcity of data on actual mobile snatchings in Peshawar, roughly 22 gangs have been arrested by the city’s police and around 175 cell phones have been recovered since the start of the year, as per police sources. Even though the numbers seem measly given Peshawar’s more than 2 million strong population, citizens have started fearing that a Karachi-like wave of mobile snatching is upon the city.

The city’s police have done little to stifle the population’s fear. “I do not have the actual figure since the data has never been maintained but around 50 cell phones each within the jurisdiction of seven police stations in the provincial capital are being snatched monthly,” one senior official of the police, adding that these numbers were from reported cases and that the actual extent of cell phone theft was unknown at this point time.

The official, whilst talking to The Express Tribune under the condition of anonymity, said, “we have registered several cases and busted a few gangs in the past five months but it has proven hard to eradicate the menace.”

Part of the reason it has proven hard to eradicate the theft of phones, is a cross border element, according to Senior Superintendent Police (SSP Operations), Haroon Rashid. “The success rate of recovering phones is low. Usually we can trace phones with the IMEI number but most stolen phones end up in Afghanistan and therefore out of our reach.”

Dil Jan Afridi, a smart phone dealer in Peshawar, concurring with Rashid’s statement, told The Express Tribune that nearly 90% of all stolen phones are smuggled into Afghanistan because the snatchers are aware that no one can touch them at home ground.

Despite the fact that a majority of the phones end up being out of the jurisdiction of local police, SSP Rashid is of the view that the crime has been curtailed. While he conceded that complete eradication in such a large city was a tall task, he added that the Ababeel Force and City Patrol were working on it. “We are doing our job. I would not say that we have eradicated it but it has dropped down as compared to the past,” Rashid informed The Express Tribune.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 22^nd, 2022.