Mobile dealers in Karachi have helped recover 3,386 stolen, snatched, and missing phones worth more than Rs285 million over the last decade.

The phones were handed over to the Citizen-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC) after being identified through a verification system used by mobile dealers before resale.

The Karachi Electronic Dealers Association (KEDA) said its members recently submitted another 231 phones to the CPLC. The handsets, valued at around Rs5 million, had been reported stolen, snatched, or missing and can now be returned to their owners.

Under an arrangement between KEDA, CPLC, and police authorities, dealers check the records of smartphones brought to them for resale. Any handset appearing on the CPLC database is separated from the sale and handed over to the relevant authorities.

KEDA President Rizwan Irfan said dealers have been instructed not to deal in stolen or snatched phones and follow procedures agreed with law-enforcement agencies.

He said sellers are normally informed when their phones are flagged in the CPLC system. Some suspects, however, have continued trying to sell large numbers of suspicious phones.

According to Irfan, dealers and the association have caught around 20 such suspects and handed them over to the police.

The used-phone market remains a major part of Karachi’s mobile trade, giving consumers access to cheaper devices while allowing dealers to earn margins on used handsets.

Irfan also pointed out that stolen and snatched phones continue to move through informal markets, with some reportedly smuggled across the borders with Afghanistan and Iran.

The issue of used-phone trading had also come under government scrutiny in 2016 when a ban on resale was considered. Traders subsequently worked with authorities to establish a verification system instead of shutting down the used-phone market.