The phone hacking investigation of Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid newspapers in Britain has broadened to include allegations that information was obtained from stolen cellphones, the senior police officer in charge of the operations told a judicial inquiry Monday.

The officer, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers of Scotland Yard, gave the most detailed assessment yet of the three investigations prompted by allegations in 2009 that The News of the World tabloid had illegally intercepted voice mail messages on an industrial scale.

The newspaper was closed last summer under the weight of public outrage. But detectives now suspect a swath of related illegal activities, including significant payments to public officials, data hacking and the cellphone thefts, Ms. Akers told the panel headed by Lord Justice Sir Brian Leveson.

The police are aware of information that Mr. Murdoch’s papers obtained from two stolen cellphones, she said. One was in Manchester, in northern England, and the other in southwest London. They are trying to establish whether these were isolated incidents, or “the tip of the iceberg,” she said.

Officers are examining 101 allegations of data interception, she said, and have made seven arrests as part of that operation.

Another inquiry, into bribes paid to public officials, has led to 41 arrests – including 23 current and former journalists, four police officers, nine current and former public officials and others who were conduits for the bribes.

One prison official is alleged to have received nearly $55,000 from Mr. Murdoch’s newspapers and from the rival Trinity Mirror and Express newspaper groups from April 2010 to June 2011.

The initial investigation into phone hacking, Operation Weeting, led to the arrest of 15 current and former journalists, 11 of whom will return to police stations on Tuesday as part of their bail conditions.

The police have notified 2,615 people that they may have been targets of the voice mail interceptions. Of these, 702 “are likely to have been victims,” she said.

Six people, including Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of Mr. Murdoch’s British newspaper group, News International, and her husband, Charlie Brooks, a horse trainer, have been charged in that investigation and will appear in court in September. The Brookses were friends of Prime Minister David Cameron.