Gaya police said on October 2 that they had recovered 44 stolen mobile phones during an investigation into thefts targeting visitors to the Pitripaksh Mela. Senior Superintendent of Police Sushil Kumar described the operation at a Friday briefing, according to The Times of India and local reporting. The disclosure concerns an operation involving several arrests, rather than a finding of guilt by a court.
Police said the investigation advanced after a suspect from Dhanbad was caught with six phones on September 30. Information gathered through questioning, camera footage and local intelligence led investigators to other suspects and locations. Navbharat Times reported a raid on a house near Station Road in the Kotwali area.
The reports agree on the recovery of 44 phones but give inconsistent totals for adults arrested and a juvenile detained. Some describe a later group separately from the first suspect. The available accounts do not resolve the final total, so no consolidated arrest figure is being treated as verified here.
Police said they were checking the recovered devices and investigating the alleged network, whose members were reported to have links to Jharkhand and West Bengal. Local coverage also described efforts to identify the phones' owners. Recovery does not mean every device has already been returned. The next verifiable steps are ownership checks, return of property and the investigation's court record.