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| Edited By: |Source: PTI |Updated: Mar 30, 2018, 02:07 AM IST
A lawyer of 23 traders, who were arrested for selling Chinese mobile handsets without unique identity numbers here, today told a city court that the case was filed at the behest of mobile companies hit hard due to low cost of the imported instruments.
"The complaint of Indian Cellular Association (ICA) was motivated as it was filed at the behest of mobile companies whose business have been hit hard because of the low price of imported Chinese handsets," senior advocate Ramesh Gupta told the court.
"The recovered handsets were lawfully imported and the arrested traders had duly paid the customs and sales tax on them," Gupta said, adding no offence under the IPC was made out against traders.
Additional chief metropolitan magistrate Ajay Pandey, after hearing the arguments on the bail applications for half-an-hour, deferred the matter for further hearing on December 21. They were arrested following the direction of the court ordering registration of an FIR.
"There was every possibility of cheating of innocent customers who may purchase the handsets with forged IMIE number," the court had said. Police arrested the traders and seized 3,502 mobile phones without the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number following raids on a central Delhi market.The traders have been booked under various provisions of the IPC, dealing with charges of cheating, forgery and posing fake instrument as genuine.
The accused were sent to judicial custody by a magisterial court yesterday following their arrest from the market in Karol Bagh here. The government has recently banned the use of mobile phones without the IMEI number, police said.
These handsets are mostly imported from China and their import and use has been declared illegal by the government, they added. According to estimates, 21 million handsets are in circulation across the country without the 15-digit unique identity number which enables security agencies to trace calls made from or received on such handsets.
Every GSM mobile phone is required to carry the unique identity number and it is allotted by the International GSM Association, police said. The Centre had on June 16 prohibited the import of mobile phones without a valid IMEI number.
