Madhya Pradesh STF arrests six for stealing from 'Amazon'

BHOPAL: In a major breakthrough, Madhya Pradesh special task force (STF) on Tuesday arrested six people for stealing expensive electronics including mobiles, laptops, apparels and many other items transported by Amazon to its distribution centre at

Gwalior

.

Tech giant Amazon had approached STF headquarters at Bhopal a few days ago after which senior IPS officer and ADG

S W Naqwi

had assigned investigations to its Gwalior unit.

Company's security officials claimed consignment including hundreds of mobile phones, worth nearly Rs 1 cr had gone mysteriously missing, between October 2017 and February while being transported from its Gurgaon warehouse to the Gwalior based distribution centre.

STF team led by inspector Ezaz Khan initiated probe and kept IMEI numbers of missing mobiles under close surveillance. Soon they zeroed in on two mobile shop owners -- Neeraj Chaursia of Gwalior and Aryan alias Aditya Agrawal of Morena, as some of the 'missing' mobile phones were found active.

After arrest, duo allegedly confessed to have procured more than 250 mobile phones from the manager of Amazon's distribution centre -Sahil Gupta at a very discounted rate.

Subsequently, when Gupta was arrested and questioned he spilled the beans and named three other employees of the distribution centre identified as Suleman Khan, Rashid Khan and Upendra Dube. One of them is a team leader while two others are supervisors.

According to STF, employees of the distribution centre used to steal selective products from consignments and reported it as 'missing' or 'short supply' to Amazon. Modus operandi was same and continued for seven months. Investigators believe that the accused have stolen more of products than the company has reported.

Around 26 packed mobile phones and three laptops have been confiscated from them so far. They were produced before a local court which remanded them to STF's custody till April 27.

Amazon said accused were not their employees.

"They are not Amazon employees. As part of the last mile delivery model, Amazon works with Service Partners who are entrepreneurs who set up delivery stations and deliver packages for Amazon. This case in Gwalior was from a Service Partner station, where delivery associates of the service partner were involved in a case of fraud," Amazon India Spokesperson told TOI.

“As India’s most trusted online marketplace we have zero tolerance towards incidents of fraud. We recently filed a case of malpractice and fraud with the Gwalior Police and especially thank the Special Task Force for their investigation and support in solving the case swiftly. We look forward to continued partnership with the police and government authorities,” company said.

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