E-Paper
Military intelligence helps Kolkata Police bust illegal telephone exchange
A SIM box routes international calls as local calls, allowing the box’s operator to bypass international rates charged by local mobile network operators. The SIM boxes are fitted with hundreds of GSM SIM cards procured using fake IDs.
The Kolkata Police have been receiving inputs from the Military Intelligence Unit in Lucknow about an illegal telephone exchange that was being run from Howrah with the help of SIM boxes.
On Saturday a team comprising officers from the city police’s Special Task Force, Kasba police station and Howrah Police arrested a 38-year-old man identified as Sunil Shaw from a hideout on Beni Madhab Mukherjee Lane in Howrah.
Six SIM boxes each having 16 to 64 SIM slots, adaptors, cables, two laptops, 175 SIM cards and a smart phone were seized by the raiding team.
A SIM box routes international calls as local calls, allowing the box’s operator to bypass international rates charged by local mobile network operators. The SIM boxes are fitted with hundreds of GSM SIM cards procured using fake IDs.
“Such an illegal exchange set up using illegal SIM boxes may serve as an illegitimate channel through which communication is made that may compromise the security of the nation as they evade regular gateways. They also rob the department of telecommunication of revenue,” said a senior officer of the STF.
This is not the first time that such illegal telephone exchanges being run with SIM boxes have been busted in the country.
In May this year, the crime branch of Mumbai Police broke up an illegal telephone exchange racket. A probe revealed that several calls were made to defence establishments in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K).
In February this year, a similar racket was found in Noida in Uttar Pradesh and Changaramkulam in Kerala. Police seized a total of eight SIM boxes and recovered 686 SIM cards from the raids in the two cities.
“Further investigation is on,” said a senior STF official.
