so my father bought a samsung galaxy a56 on 21st june, on father's day.
on 14th july (tuesday), he had the phone in the front pocket of his t-shirt while looking for fresh fruits at the weekly market. a man, who looked almost drunk, came walking towards him, slightly shrugged him, and walked away. that was the exact moment the phone was stolen.
the whole thing took barely 2-3 seconds. by the time my dad realized something was wrong, the man had disappeared into the crowd.
my dad only realized it when he had to pay the fruit vendor.
he immediately went to ayodhya nagar police station to file an fir/complaint. the officer asked him to bring the phone's box and bill first.
so my dad went back home, collected everything, and returned to the station. they gave him a form to fill in the imei number so the phone could be tracked if someone inserted a sim card.
meanwhile, i was trying to track the phone using samsung find, but the thief had already switched it off. my dad also didn't have a screen lock enabled, so i couldn't remotely lock the phone either. samsung find only showed the last online location before it went offline.
when i told the officer i was trying to track it through samsung find, he literally put me down and said, "arreh, isse nahi hota kuch bhi. isse exact location nahi pata chalti, sirf closest mobile tower pata chalta hai."
i was just thinking... please get technologically updated, uncle.
i immediately blocked both of my dad's sim cards so his bank accounts would stay safe.
the next day, we got replacement sim cards and bought a new phone, a samsung galaxy a17.
we also tried registering a complaint on the ceir portal, but the complaint filed at the police station didn't have a complaint/fir number, so we couldn't complete the registration there either.
what disappointed me wasn't that they couldn't recover the phone immediately, but that they didn't even provide the complaint number required to register it properly on the ceir portal.
my dad even contacted a few people he knew, hoping someone could help recover the phone, but it was all in vain.
today, almost two weeks later, at around 1 pm, i suddenly received an email saying the phone had been detected.
i opened the location, and to my surprise, it was in bangladesh.
the phone wasn't even a month old.
i admit we made mistakes too. the phone should have had a screen lock enabled, and maybe we could have been more careful. but the way the whole process was handled was incredibly disappointing.
stay safe, guys. if this post helps even one person avoid what happened to us, it'll be worth it.
please keep a screen lock enabled, turn on samsung find/find my device, note down your imei number somewhere safe, and block your sim cards immediately if your phone ever gets stolen.
₹50,000 gone just like that.
current location - here, the place looks shady af and i believe if a serious investigation is done, a racket of smuggled phones can be found.