Mumbai Police have busted a mobile phone theft racket operating through the `hawala` channel and selling the stolen gadgets in Nepal and Bangladesh, an official said. Hawala denotes illegal transaction of funds by skirting the legal banking channels. The scale of the crime can be estimated from the fact that during a single raid, 480 mobile handsets including iphones were seized from a location at Maharashtra Nagar in Mankhurd area on July 15, he said.

A preliminary investigation suggested the gang had links in other countries also, he said. Besides the mobile phones, the police had also seized 9.5 kg of ganja, 174 bottles of foreign liquor, two swords and a laptop during the raid, all collectively worth about Rs 75 lakh, the official said.