Instead of waiting for police to probe, they follow leads to nab culprit

Two city youths have shown that a bit of self-belief when combined with the power of technology can work wonders.

On June 13, S. Simiyon, 24, a resident of Perambur and a medical representative by profession, visited the customer relationship centre of a leading mobile phone service provider in Purasawalkam for a new SIM card.

Mr. Simiyon kept his mobile phone on the counter while completing the paperwork and then left the place. On stepping out, he realised that he had forgotten his phone. He rushed back inside and made inquiries. He then requested to be shown video footage captured by the CCTV cameras at the centre.

He was soon joined by his friend, M. Jaffer Hussain, a technician working with a broadcasting firm. The two scanned the footage together. Two hours into the exercise, during which they played and replayed the tape, they managed to get a fix on a person who could be seen moving around suspiciously.

Some staff members told them that the person in question was from another State and had visited the centre to inquire about portability.

He had left a number with them.

When Mr. Simiyon and his friend tried the number, it was found to have been switched off. That night, they filed a formal complaint with the Kilpauk police.

Complaint lodged

But the duo did not stop with just lodging the complaint. “We did not want to give up and initiated an investigation ourselves without waiting for something from the police. We pursued the leads,” Mr. Simiyon said.

The next day, he saved the number given by the centre on WhatsApp to see if a photo of the suspect would come up. But that effort drew a blank. Then the two friends turned to social media networks to identify the person. They finally got lucky with Facebook Messenger — the number was connected to a user by the name of Pankaj Sharma from Bihar.

“The user did not respond to our requests on Messenger. Then we turned our attention to people who liked his posts. Finally we managed to post a message in Hindi to one of his friends and got his number. We engaged a friend who can speak Hindi with a Bihari accent and had a phone conversation with a friend of the suspect. Under the pretext of offering a job in Chennai to his friend, we managed to get a phone number that the suspect was using,” said Mr. Hussain.

Mr. Simiyon and Mr. Jaffer then called the suspect and offered him a job in Chennai. They persuaded him to reveal his whereabouts by offering him a vehicle pickup service. Though the suspect cut the call, they zeroed in on his location -- a furniture company in Madhavaram.

On Wednesday morning, they cornered him as he was leaving his Madhavaram workplace. When they confronted him with all the evidence that they had, he admitted to stealing the mobile phone.

They escorted Sharma to the police station and the mobile phone was recovered — six days after it was lost.