E-commerce giant Flipkart has been asked to help with an investigation of what the Delhi Police say is a massive racket involving the theft of imported cellphones from airline cargo. Six persons have been arrested in the case.
The police said they have recovered 209 phones worth around Rs 40 lakh after the arrest of a gang that stole mobile phones from the cargo at Delhi's IGI airport.
They said 22 of these phones were recovered from people who had bought them on Flipkart, after members of the gang allegedly confessed to selling them on that site.
The buyers were traced from across India, including Mysore, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Delhi and Chandigarh.
In July, a Delhi-based logistics company had reported that 600 high-end mobile phones were missing from a shipment sourced from Hong Kong.
When the airport police failed to track the missing phones, the matter was reported to the Delhi police, which formed a special team to investigate the case.
The police said the phones were smuggled out allegedly with the help of cargo personnel and then sold through a Flipkart agent based in Rajasthan to customers.
The Delhi police have sent a notice to Flipkart, asking the company how these mobile phones were sold without verification of where they were sourced from.
In the afternoon, a Flipkart spokesperson said, "Each and every one of our 40,000-plus sellers are mandated to adhere to stringent guidelines".
"Any exception or violation is taken very seriously. We enforce a strict policy of zero tolerance against unscrupulous sellers who sell products that are fake, stolen, or in violation of any laws of the land," he added.