Two Chinese nationals were arrested on Sunday in connection with the pre-activated SIM card sale case in which the sleuths of the Anti-Terrorist Squad had nabbed 14 persons recently.

The accused were identified as Xu Xunfu aka July and his woman partner in crime, Li Teng Li aka Alice.

The police are interrogating them.

On January 17, the ATS had arrested 14 persons, nine of them from different districts of Uttar Pradesh and five from Noida for selling pre-activated SIM cards for opening bank accounts.

The arrest of the 14 accused came during investigation of a case in which unidentified persons had used pre-activated SIMs to open bank accounts online in different banks using fake names and submitting fake identity proofs at the time submitting their online applications.

It also surfaced that the accused made bank transactions of money from unknown sources or through criminal activities     

It surfaced during investigation that all the 14 accused and their leader Prem Singh had sold pre-activated SIM cards to different foreign nationals in New Delhi.

The ATS sleuths developed the information and the name of the above Chinese nationals surfaced in the crime.

ADG (Law and Order) Prashant Kumar and IG (ATS) GK Goswami had got a red corner and a blue corner notice issued against the accused Chinese nationals.

The sleuths posing as customers engaged the accused Chinese nationals in talks and nabbed both of them in Noida.

Both confessed their crime and disclosed that they used to purchase pre-activated SIM cards from some persons, including Prem Singh, who were arrested in the past. They said they used to provide the pre-activated SIM cards to the manager of a hotel located in Gurgaon of Haryana and is owned by a Chinese couple. The accused used to remain in touch with their handlers through a WeChat app.

The accused told the police that they shared to the Chinese nationals 150 OTPs generated for WhatsApp registration on 150 Indian mobile numbers. They said they did not know who and where these WhatsApp numbers were being used at present.

The accused confessed that they had provided 100 pre-activated SIMs to the manager of the hotel.

It further surfaced that the business visa of Alice had expired in September last year and of July in August 2020.

The police said the accused were being interrogated further and added that the police would seek their police custody remand after presenting them in a court.