Wednesday 15 October 2008

Lost and not found.. yet..

Some of you might already know or experienced (if you tried reaching me) that I lost my new mobile before its first month birthday. Ironically, I had just started looking into the manual the very day I lost it. Had been to this wedding reception, mainly as a chauffer for mom and dad and was generally cribbing about some silly rituals when I did not realize that my phone had fallen off my lap during dinner. I started missing my tall, dark, beautiful Nokia E51 within minutes and went back to be told that some elderly woman had picked it up. I was pretty sure that I would get it back immediately; the idea of an elderly woman who is attending a wedding, keeping someone else's phone did not even cross my mind.. I still cannot believe it. But, I called atleast 15 times without getting an answer. The phone was actually switched off within 15 minutes of losing it. The couple who had seen this woman described her in a little more detail, and I tried to spot her in the video. But the video guy was too busy and committed to his work. I tried to coax him into believing that tracing this woman who apparently 'took' my mobile was more interesting than editing and mixing the video of the couple on stage which he gets to do almost everyday. He was not convinced by my argument.
Well, I spent a day in repentence and worry, the only hope being the mobile tracker which was enabled on my phone. With this, my brother would get a message when the SIM was changed without providing a password. So, we waited and the message finally arrived, exactly 24 hrs after it was 'taken'. Two different SIM cards inserted within a matter of few minutes. The information also included the IMEI number of my phone as well as the cell info.. some brushing up of Mobile Communications from.. was it 7th sem?? Having the SIM Id was like knowing the unique identifier of the thief..

The next day, we got an acknowledgement from the nearest police station to be able to enquire on the SIM ID. A little bit of running around and we (wrongly) estiblished that the SIM belonged to AirTel. Well, AirTel wouldn't give the details so easily, so, we now have to get an approval from the ACP of Bangalore South District. The current status is that we have got the request forwarded from the police to various service providers to trace the SIM ID. Meanwhile, we got another SMS today that the SIM was changed yet again. Looks like my phone is rejecting any SIM other than mine :)

The search is still on. Watch this space for updates.

5 comments:

Chetz said...

Its a painful process to follow up with various departments to get back your cell but at the same time an opener for rest of us reading this blog.

Good Luck!!!!

Lavanya K said...

Thanks Chetan! I need a lot of that.

Anonymous said...

updates?

Lavanya K said...

Things going slow even though these days our police use lot of hi-tech stuff like computers and email and all that. Me waiting.

Lavanya K said...

Update: Got the current owner and address of my phone from the police. Mr. Unauthorized_Phone_User is from Chitradurga, currently found using my phone in Hubli. I have the cell info (86:702:60006 - Vodafone) of the area where the SIM was changed. Any idea how to locate the area using the cell id?