Facebook posts lead to arrest

TT, Jalpaiguri: A youth who posted pictures in the social media of a cell phone that he allegedly stole from a shop made police track his location and was arrested here on Tuesday.

On May 25, when owner Amrita Pal went to the shop she found out that three cell phones, including her own which she had left at the shop by mistake, were missing. The woman then had lodged a police complaint mentioning that three mobile phones worth around Rs 50,000 had been stolen from her shop here.

"After some days, she informed us that a youth has changed her profile photo in Facebook and has also posted some other photos, probably of his friends and acquaintances," said Biswasroy Sarkar, inspector-in-charge of the local police station.

The police checked the posts and could realise that Dipak Roy, the youth who had stolen the phones, has used Pal's phone to post the photos.

"The youth had no inkling that the posts were made through the owner's account. We could get their photos from the posts and managed to locate them. Seeing the backgrounds, we found that the photos were clicked in some village fair," Sarkar said.

During the investigation, the police spotted one of the youths whose photo was posted at a fair and contacted him. "We spoke to him and he told us about Dipak. Later, we went to Kurshamari in Dhupguri and nabbed him," the officer added.

During interrogation, Dipak, who is around 20-years-old, admitted the crime. He had got into the shop with a ventilator on May 24 night and took away three cell phones, said the youth.

All the cellphones were recovered.