Lost & Found: Vizianagaram cops return 62 lost phones to their owners

Vizianagaram: The Vizianagaram police handed over 62 lost mobile phones to their owners who had lost the phones at various places. The Vizianagaram police were once again lauded for their efforts to trace missing and stolen mobile phones of the people in the district. They have launched a web portal to trace lost or stolen phones.

Vizianagaram police chief Deepika M. Patil said the police teams visited Odisha, Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and a few other states to trace the missing mobile phones. "We have traced 62 lost mobile phones worth Rs. 11.2 lakhs and handed them over to their owners on Saturday," she said.

It may be recalled that a month ago, the Vizianagaram police had traced over 100 mobile phones (lost and stolen) worth Rs. 16.45 lakhs and handed them over the phones to their owners. Ms. Patil added, "With a series of incidents of theft or loss of mobile phones, we launched WhatsApp chatbot (8977945606) to receive complaints regarding lost or misplaced mobiles in Vizianagaram district in July this year."

The chatbot received immense response from the public in parts of the district as now, people don't need to go to the police stations to file a complaint on missing or stolen mobile phones. Several people lodged complaints through the WhatsApp chatbot.

Four engineering students—Adari Deepika, Jami Chandini, P. Usha Ramya Sri, and Uppala Likhitha—of Vignan's Institute of Engineering for Women in Duvvada have developed a special web portal called vzmmobiletracker.in. They developed the web portal using Python programming after they came to know about the Vizianagaram police initiative to locate the stolen or missing mobile phones.