Mumbai: In a joint operation with the Military Intelligence, the city crime branch has busted illegal international telephone exchanges operating in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Kerala. During the operation, the crime branch team arrested 34-year-old Hilar Thacharayil Mohhamad Kutty, a resident of Palakad district of Kerala. According to the crime branch officer, “Another terminal of these telephone exchanges were found to be in China.”
In January, a Dongri resident received a call from Saudi Arabia. However, the call was made from a mobile number in India. It was clear that the call was indeed made through a fake telephone exchange using sim box.
During investigation it has been revealed that the international calls were illegally routed through fake telephone exchange based in Changaramkulam in Kerala and in Noida. The said places were raided by teams from the Mumbai Crime branch along with the officers of Military Intelligence. Subsequently, during the raid, 8 sim boxes, 688 sim cards and other electronic gadgets were recovered and Kutty, the mastermind of the fake telephone exchange, was arrested from Kerala. He is currently being brought to Mumbai city.
These illegal telephone exchanges were reportedly running since past few months and they could have caused a loss of crores of Rupees to the Telecom department and service providers.
“Running an illegal call center is a loss of revenue to the country and such mechanism could well be used to for anti national activities as well, during the operation we have also identified the location of another such illegal call center,” said DCP Akbar Pathan of crime branch.
The international calls were first transferred to illegal telephone exchange in China or other countries from their the calls were routed international VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) calls with the help of sim boxes same process was reversed in illegal telephone exchanges operating in India which again routed such VOIP calls through local mobile phones using illegal servers causing loss of revenues to Indian authorities. To trace such VOIP calls is also difficult.
