Fed up of constant harassment and arrests by the police authorities, the city SIM card dealers are all set to approach the Bombay high court.
Fed up of constant harassment and arrests by the police authorities, the city SIM card dealers are all set to approach the Bombay high court.
The Mobile Dealers Welfare Association, Mumbai, will be filing a writ petition in the high court demanding to squash all complaints against them, where they have been accused of selling SIM cards without verifying the documents to people involved in unlawful activities.
“There have been 50 such cases where dealers were accused and summoned by the police, saying they sold cards to wrong people without verifying their documents. We are here to sell the cards and it is not in our capacity to verify whether the documents provided are genuine or not. This is the responsibility of the service provider,” said Shafqat Usmani, president of the association.
According to the rules of the department of telecommunications, the licensee (service provider) shall ensure that the information about the subscriber is entered in to the licensee’s database correctly, based on the information in Customer Acquisition Forms (CAF) and supporting documents. The companies are also supposed to nominate separate officials, who are responsible for the process of entering subscriber’s information in the database and cross checking the information.
“Our writ petition against the police and the state government demands to squash all complaints against the dealers. The police harass these dealers, but it is not the dealers’ responsibility to verify the documents,” said Advocate Parag Pradhan, the association’s representative and president of legal cell of MNS.
Pradhan added that, the police have booked dealers under IPC sections such as 419, 420, 466, 468, 471 and 34; out of which some are non-bailable. “How can the dealer be held responsible?
Also, the company goes free, if it pays Rs1000 as a fine for each unverified SIM, but dealer has to suffer the police investigation,” asked Pradhan.
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