Why an IMEI check is the cheapest insurance you can buy

When you buy a used phone across the counter, you also take on its past. If that phone was stolen, the law does not ask whether you paid a fair price. It asks whether you had reason to believe it was stolen.

Section 317 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 makes it an offence to dishonestly receive or keep stolen property when you know, or have reason to believe, that it is stolen: up to three years in prison, a fine, or both. For someone who habitually deals in such property, the punishment can go up to life imprisonment. A shop that never checks will find it harder to show it had no reason to believe.

A phone with a changed IMEI is a separate problem. Under Section 42 of the Telecommunications Act, 2023, tampering with a telecom identifier such as an IMEI, or knowingly keeping a handset that carries a tampered one, can bring up to three years in prison, a fine of up to ₹50 lakh, or both. The Department of Telecommunications has repeated this warning to resellers.

The numbers are not small. On 3 October 2026, the Department of Telecommunications' Sanchar Saathi portal showed 60,94,489 lost or stolen phones blocked, 37,82,704 traced and 14,02,169 recovered. Every blocked phone is a phone someone may still try to sell.

What a check at the counter does: it looks up the IMEI in the records the check covers and tells you whether there is a match. A match is your reason to stop the deal before any money moves. No match means only that those records have nothing on the phone today. It is not a clearance, and it does not prove who owns the phone.

A good counter habit takes under a minute. Dial *#06# and match the IMEI with the box and the bill. On a dual-SIM phone, note both IMEIs. Run the check. Take the seller's ID and a signed declaration of where the phone came from. Keep the result with the date and time.

That record is the insurance. If a question comes months later, a dated check, the seller's identity and the declaration show what you did before you paid. It costs a few seconds per phone. Not having it can cost the phone, the money, and a visit to the police station.

This article is general information, not legal advice. For a specific case, speak to a lawyer.