How sanctions on Russia sparked Rs 1,000 crore telecom theft in India

On March 6, a Special Weapons And Tactics (SWAT) team and a local unit of the Uttar Pradesh state police were on high alert. The police were surveilling a stretch of the Noida Expressway a few kilometres from the Indian capital of Delhi, looking for a gang of highly sophisticated and resourceful thieves and smugglers.

Over the past months, the gang had successfully orchestrated a series of heists, making away not with money or jewellery but expensive and critical equipment stolen off dozens of telecom towers in Uttar Pradesh’s Gautam Buddha Nagar district. 

Now, aided by CCTV footage and mobile data from nearby telecom towers, the police finally had their suspects—a white Toyota Fortuner and a red Maruti Swift hatchback—in sight. When they stopped the vehicles, the SWAT team nabbed six members of the gang and recovered telecom radio equipment from their possession. These arrests helped police unearth an interstate racket that involved not just stealing telecom equipment but smuggling it out of India.

While thefts of batteries, fuel, and generators deployed at telecom towers are a pretty common occurrence not just in India but overseas, the scourge of stealing vital telecom equipment is a new phenomenon. Indeed, the theft of radio equipment—which requires core technical know-how and the skills to scale tall telecom towers and disaggregate equipment—started in early 2023. Over the past 18 months, there have been thousands of such cases, with the phenomenon only gaining steam since the start of the year.

This has resulted in India’s leading telcos—Airtel, Reliance Jio, and Vi (formerly Vodafone Idea)—losing over 1,000 pieces of telecom equipment supplied by European vendors Nokia and Ericsson, since the start of the year, said a senior executive who works closely with one of the leading telecom operators.

According to the telecom industry body Cellular Operators Association of India, or COAI, which represents the three private mobile operators, telcos have lost at least 18,000 pieces of telecom equipment. This equipment is estimated to be worth between Rs 900-1,000 crore. 

While these thefts often extend to batteries and solar panels on towers, the most valuable (and therefore, coveted) equipment are radio receivers and baseband units. The theft of this equipment directly impairs the coverage and service quality of telcos.

These thefts, which have taken place in Delhi-NCR, Rajasthan, Assam, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Odisha, Punjab, and Haryana are not disconnected, an investigation by The CapTable has revealed. “This is being run by a national syndicate,” said the senior telco executive quoted earlier.