Illegal telephone exchange racket busted in Thane
The police say that the government has suffered a loss of Rs 30 crore that is earned from international calls.
Mumbai: The Thane police crime branch unit-1 and 2 busted an illegal telephone exchange racket on Thursday at four places in Bhiwandi and arrested four people in the racket who were in to this business from past two years.
The modus operandi of the accused was to call from an international number to an Indian citizen, however, such that the international number would appear as in Indian number on the receiver’s screen. However, attempts to trace the number would go in vain despite using software. The police say that the government has suffered a loss of Rs 30 crore that is earned from international calls.
A team of Thane crime branch unit-1 and unit-2 along with department Of telecommunication (DoT) officials raided the place. “We have seized a total of 18 sim card boxes where each box had 420 sim cards. Apart from this, we also seized 9 routers, two laptops, Rs 15000 cash and five mobiles worth Rs 17 lakh. We have arrested four people, who are residents of Bhiwandi and they are being kept in police custody after having been produced in court. The seized sim cards are bogus and are acquired through fake documents. The calls were connected mainly from Middle East countries (UAE and Saudi Arabia)”, said Thane police commissioner, Param Bir Singh.
Mr Singh added, “We will also take the help of Cyber cell experts to get more information about it and also to find more information from the sim cards. We are investigating to ascertain the motive behind their act.”