A Mumbai Anti-Terrorism Squad team busted an illegal international telephone exchange racket and arrested seven people on late Friday night. An ATS officer said the racket used the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), bypassing the mobile phone networks.

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The illegal network was active from the last four to five months and caused a loss of at least Rs 35.50 crores in revenue to the telecom department and service providers.

“ATS carried out the raid, after receiving a tip-off, at five different places at the same time at Shivaji Nagar, Masjid Bandar, Dongri, Worli and New Panvel on Friday and arrested seven people who were running this illegal telephone exchange,” ATS Deputy Commissioner of Police Vinay Kumar said.

In this raid, the team seized a Dell Company server, nine sim boxes, 513 different Simcards, three laptops, four desktops, seven to eight routers, two Internet terminating switches and 11 different mobile phones total worth Rs 7.55 lakh.

The accused are identified as Naseem Khan (29), Faisal Batliwala (28), Sameer Deoraj (30), Hussain Sayyad (39), Mandar Achrekar (36), Sibtain Merchant (33) and Imtiaz Sheikh (38).

In modus operandi, the accused used the internet-based VoIP, bypassing the mobile phone networks. Most of the calls were bypassed regular telecom networks and made profits directly from Gulf countries like Kuwait and Qatar.

Later they transmit the voice call in digital data pack and when it comes to India through the router in the server, they use different mobile networks. ATS said it is difficult to trace such VoIPs.

Probe is also underway to find out if these illegal telephone exchanges were also being used for anti-national activities.

Where’s The Cut?

The illegal network was active during the last four to five months and caused a loss of Rs 35.50 crore in revenue to the telecom department and service providers