If your phone goes missing in Gujarat and you block it on the Centre’s CEIR portal, the odds of seeing it again have improved this year. They remain well short of even. Of 2,38,533 handsets blocked in the state so far, police have traced 1,47,427 and returned 74,823 to their owners, according to state figures released on October 28 and carried by DeshGujarat and by IANS via Social News XYZ.
Reading the 50.75 per cent figure
The state puts its recovery rate at 50.75 per cent, second among major states after Andhra Pradesh, against a national average of 37.4 per cent. That rate matches returned phones as a share of traced phones: 74,823 out of 1,47,427. Measured against every phone blocked, the return rate works out to about 31 per cent, by our calculation from the same figures.
Both numbers tell you something. The first shows that once the system finds a handset, police in Gujarat get roughly half of them back to the owner. The second shows that about two in five blocked phones have not been traced at all.
The trend points upward. The state says its rate stood at 41 per cent in October 2025, a gain of 9.75 percentage points in a year. In April, a release covering 2025-26 put Gujarat third nationally at 46.71 per cent, with 53,564 handsets returned, ThePrint reported. Gujarat has moved up a place since then.
Anand, Dang and Ahmedabad led the half-year table
On October 27, the Department of Telecommunications’ Gujarat licensed service area and the state police honoured nodal officers from the districts that did best between April 1 and September 30. Anand’s cyber cell came first, Dang’s local crime branch second, and Ahmedabad city’s team third. Dang also placed second in the April ranking. A district with few blocking requests can post a high score, so the table says more about follow-up work than about where phones get stolen.
How to block a lost phone and get it back
The CEIR (Central Equipment Identity Register) system records a handset’s IMEI number as lost. That blocks it on Indian networks and lets police trace it if someone uses it again. The Sanchar Saathi portal sets out the steps:
- File a police complaint and keep a copy.
- Get a duplicate SIM for your lost number, since the portal sends an OTP to it. SMS on a reissued SIM starts 24 hours after activation.
- Submit the blocking request with the complaint copy and an ID proof. The purchase invoice is optional. Keep the request ID.
- If the phone turns up, tell the police and file the unblocking request with that ID.
You can also block a phone through the state police or the Sanchar Saathi app. If police placed the block, they have to lift it too.
Sources: DeshGujarat, IANS via Social News XYZ, ThePrint, Sanchar Saathi (DoT)
This report was written with AI assistance from the publicly reported sources linked here; each fact was cross-checked against at least two of them.