Gavit

Bhopal, April 2: The man second in command in the Union home ministry cut a sorry figure when a wily thief nicked Union minister of state for home Manikrao Gavit’s mobile in Sarni town of Betul district, 250 km from Bhopal.

Two days have passed since Gavit lost his prized possession and hundreds of policemen from Government Reserve Police (GRP), Railway Protection Force and the Betul district administration have been searching for the Nokia mobile without success.

Superintendent of police (railways) Renu Shukla said: “Yes, a report of theft has been registered at Sarni GRP police station. We do not know for sure where and how the minister lost his mobile.”

Sarni police in charge S. Javare said Gavit had got off at Gohragongri police station with another Union minister Kantilal Bhuria. The duo went to Sarni to attend a tribal meet, stayed at a rest house and left the next day. “We are trying our level best to locate the mobile, which appears to be switched off.”

Taking a dig at the central and state governments, former Union minister Dileep Singh Bhuria said: “The incident is not small but a telling commentary. If the police cannot trace a mobile belonging to a Union minister, how will it protect the common man? Where did Gavit’s mobile go? He must be having personal security guards, state protocol officials and police all the time.”

Javare said efforts were on to get the mobile’s international mobile equipment identity (IMEI) to deactivate it. IMEI is a number unique to every mobile phone which is usually found printed on the phone underneath the battery and can also be found by dialling the sequence *#06# on the phone.

The IMEI number is used by networks to identify valid devices and, therefore, can be used to stop a stolen phone from accessing a network.

For example, if a mobile phone is stolen, the owner can call the network provider and instruct them to “ban” the phone using its IMEI number. This renders the phone useless, regardless of whether the phone’s SIM is changed.

Around two and a half months ago, former wicket-keeper Sambaran Banerjee misplaced his mobile but did not report the loss to the service provider as he was in a hurry to board a flight. By the time he did, the person who got the phone had shot off obscene text messages to Kapil Dev, Sourav Ganguly and Dilip Vengsarkar using numbers saved in the phone. He then switched it off and threw away the SIM card.

The confusion that can be caused if a junior home minister’s phone falls in a prankster’s hands cannot be brushed aside.

Police sources said they were waiting for Gavit’s clearance to deactivate his mobile. When contacted at his Delhi residence, his staff said the minister was unavailable as he was “somewhere” in his Lok Sabha constitu-ency, Nandurbar, in Maharashtra.

Incidentally, Gavit has some unpleasant memories in connection with mobile phones.

A few months ago, he had courted a controversy which almost cost his job when a private TV channel had claimed that he was in touch with a convict, Mahendra Singh Bhatti, jailed in Bulandshahr (Uttar Pradesh) in connection with a murder case. The “telephone conversation” later turned out to be fake.