In the wake of the upcoming Ganeshotsav, Pune Police and other investigative agencies are on high alert for potential illegal activities in the city. One such action was taken by the Pune unit of the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) by busting an illegal telephone exchange. A man, identified as Naushad Ahmed Siddiqui, 32, a native of Bhiwandi, was arrested for allegedly operating it from an apartment in the Kondhwa area.
According to officials, they received a tip-off about an illegal telephone exchange operating from an apartment in Kondhwa. The police and a team from the central Department of Telecommunication raided MS Complex at Mitha Nagar on August 24 and busted the operation. They seized seven SIM boxes from different companies, 3,788 SIM cards, nine Wi-Fi routers, an antenna, an inverter and a laptop during the raid.
Preliminary investigation has revealed that the SIM cards were being used for terminating international calls as local calls, bypassing the licensed international long-distance operators’ (ILDO) network.
The SIM box fraud is a setup where fraudsters team up with partners abroad to route international calls through the Internet using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). These international calls appear as calls with local/national CLI.
A thorough investigation has been started with Siddiqui being booked under Section 318 (4) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and relevant sections of the Indian Telegraph Act, the Indian Telecommunication Act and the Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act.
ATS sources said that a thorough investigation is being conducted into the background of the detained suspect. “Where did he get this SIM card from? Which distributor supplied him with SIM cards? How did he set up the system used to prevent Indian systems from intercepting calls from abroad? Where did he get his training? Who helped him financially with this work? Who gave place in Kondhwa? All this a part of the investigation,” said a source.
