My wife had a similar experience.....
She ran a mobile phone shop and 4 mobiles were stolen from her shop.
One of the employees noted the number of the car in which the robbers escaped.
The car was traced 4 days later and all the 4 mobiles along with some other stolen property (belonging to other shops) were recovered.
A case was booked and she appeared twice in court.
This was about 4 years ago.
Since there were no further developments for a long time, she wrote a letter to the CI of the concerned Police Station (at that time, I did not know anything about the
RTI Act) and she got a reply that the stolen property had been returned to her. On physical verification, she found out that there was no signature on the "receipt" given for getting the 4 phones back.
Reading the above news article, seems that it is common practice.