A gang broke into a cellphone shop on Lala Lajpat Rai Sarani (Elgin Road) on Sunday night and stole Rs 3.5 lakh in cash and handsets valued at more than Rs 15 lakh.

The burglary was discovered around 9am, when owner Uner Alam opened the shop on the ground floor of a four-storeyed building. “The gang stole 240 phones,” said Vishal Garg, the deputy commissioner of police (special), detective department.

The night guard told the police that he had neither seen anyone entering the building nor heard any sound from inside. The sleuths suspect the burglars had entered the shop through a gap in the wall and then broken the glass panes of a door.

“The showcases where the cellphones were kept were not under lock and key. But they had to break open the lock of the cash box,” said an officer of Bhowanipore police station.

“We are trying to find out whether any insider was involved in the burglary,” the officer added.

The sleuths have contacted their counterparts in Bihar and Jharkhand. “Several cellphone shops across the city were burgled a year ago. We caught a few youths involved in the crime and all of them were from the two neighbouring states,” said Jawed Shamim, the deputy commissioner of police (detective department). “They engaged children aged between 10 and 12 years to enter the shops through small gaps in the wall.”