The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) administration has instructed all assistant commissioners and ward-level officers to immediately report to the police any unauthorised digging in the area under their supervision. The direction comes after thieves dug up a footpath in Matunga and stole around 103 metres of copper phone cables worth Rs 6.78 lakh.

MTNL had started receiving a large number of complaints from customers about dead telephones, after which the company learnt that the cables it had laid under the footpath between Dadar TT Circle and Maheshwari Udyan had been stolen.