Kingpin of SIM card fraud & telecom employee held

Vastrapur police on Wednesday arrested one Ravindra Panchal, who is accused of providing 100 activated SIM cards to three youngsters. The trio -  Jaydeep Devadia, Kishan Patel and Maulik Sathwara - was arrested from Himalaya Mall on Monday in connection with the SIM cards. An employee of a service provider is also involved in the racket.

Preliminary police investigation revealed that Panchal, owner of a cellphone store at Chandlodia Lake, acquired ID proofs and documents from his customers for SIM cards but never submitted the same with the cellphone company. He kept the documents with himself and activated other SIM cards using them.

By using this modus operandi, Panchal acquired documents of around 300 customers and activated SIM cards before selling them at a cheaper rate. A hundred of these were sold to Devadia, who was caught selling them on Tuesday. 

Police have also learnt that a contract employee of a cellphone operator was also involved in the racket. Based on this tip-off, police detained one Naresh, who used his contacts in the company to activate the SIM cards.

The service provider has now been asked to submit data of these SIM cards for further probe.

The racket surfaced after Vastrapur police nabbed the trio with the SIM cards on Monday night. Investigation revealed that they are college students and acquired the cards from Panchal at Rs10 per card to be sold later for Rs35 each.