Investigators on Saturday recovered a mobile phone of Raghib Parwez from inside the Jaguar that had rammed into a Mercedes in the early hours of August 17 at the intersection of Theatre Road-Loudon Street crossing killing two Bangladeshi bystanders.

A team of officers of Lalbazar’s detective department accompanied Raghib to Shakespeare Sarani police station and scanned the Jaguar F-PACE in his presence before recovering one of his mobile phones from underneath a car-seat. Raghib was arrested on August 21 after it emerged that he was at the wheels and not his brother Arsalan arrested earlier.

Police also recovered the spectacle of Raghib’s friend who police said was accompanying him in the car on that night.

The Jaguar F-PACE was examined by forensic experts several times since August 17 after police recovered the vehicle from close to the crash site. But the phone wasn’t recovered till Saturday.

Officers claimed the primary attention of the forensic experts was on retrieving the event data recorder of the Jaguar so that the data could be analysed. This was necessary to identify multiple phone numbers that was synced with the vehicle and the gaze did not go beyond the data recorder.

“Immediately after the accident, Raghib stepped out of the car with his friend and the two ran across the intersection towards Kala Mandir. Raghib then called up Mohammed Hamza, his maternal uncle, using the phone set that he was carrying with him and asked him to pick him up,” said an officer. “He didn’t realise that his other mobile phone was not in his possession then.”

Besides Raghib’s mobile phone, investigators also found a spectacle of his friend. It was possibly flung away in the impact of the accident.

Police officers said it was a high-end mobile phone but refused to spell out the details of the set saying it was among the several phones that the elder scion of the Calcutta-based biryani chain, Arsalan, owned. Like his other mobile phones, even this number was synced with the Jaguar’s infotainment telematics data, an officer said. This meant Raghib could use this number to unlock the vehicle’s technology before driving it.

“The mobile phone will remain a vital piece of evidence in this case,” said an officer. “We will send it for forensic examination. Among several things we will match Raghib’s fingerprints with those on the recovered mobile phone set.”

In a reconstruction of the events, the police have learnt that Raghib left his Beckbagan house a little after 11 on the night of August 16 and went to attend a birthday of one of his friends.

After stepping out of the party, a second friend was supposed to join the two for a ride on the Jaguar. But that never happened. The friend also told the investigators that he had asked Raghib to drop him off near Jeevandeep Building and he would take an app cab to home. But Raghib didn’t listen to him.

“We will soon arrange for recording Raghib’s friend’s statement before a magistrate,” the officer said.