In a bizarre incident, 600 mobile phone towers have gone missing in Tamil Nadu since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
Mobile phone tower installation company GTL Infrastructure Ltd said the towers were stolen when it was not monitored since 2017. Meanwhile, a police investigation revealed that 600 mobile phone towers of the company had gone missing.
GTL Infrastructure Limited, which was involved in the installation of mobile phone towers, is headquartered in Mumbai, while its regional office is located at Purasavakkam, Chennai.
Reportedly, the company has installed and managed 26,000 mobile phone towers across India. In Tamil Nadu alone, more than 6,000 mobile phone towers have been installed and maintained.
Earlier in 2018, the private tower service company had stopped its service due to heavy losses. Thus, the network service of mobile phone towers installed across the country came to a standstill.
When these mobile towers were not functioning in Tamil Nadu, the companies that were monitoring it could not visit the tower site and monitor and maintain it during the COVID-19 period.
Recently, when officials went to ascertain the status of mobile phone towers that were not working for other network needs, they were shocked to learn that a mobile tower was found missing in Erode district. Subsequently, a complaint was filed with the police station of the district where the tower was located and a case has been registered as per the company that installed the mobile phone tower.
Subsequent surveys on the status of non-working mobile phone towers across Tamil Nadu revealed that over 600 towers had gone missing. The victim company has specifically accused the mysterious gang of taking advantage of the COVID-19 lockdown and stealing their mobile phone towers which are unmanned and unclaimed.
Following a complaint from one of the company’s executives, the police learned that it was not just one tower that had gone missing, but a whopping number of 600 towers had gone missing by now. An official on condition of anonymity confirmed the theft.
Eventually, the company further stated that there are many such towers located and the police should take timely action to prevent such thefts in the state. Notably, the company said it would cost between Rs 25 lakh and Rs 40 lakh to set up a mobile phone tower and added that the loss has now run into crores.
In a similar incident, a Vodafone mobile tower installed at a cost of Rs 28 lakh in Koodal Pudur area of Madurai district in Tamil Nadu has reportedly gone missing during January this year.
The tower was later installed in the Amaravati street area of Koodal Pudur at a cost of Rs 28.82 lakh. The matter came to the fore after the telecom company took cognizance of the persistent complaints of non-connection and decided to investigate the local tower.
(with inputs from Ambarson in Chennai)
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