The sleuths of the Anti-Terrorists Squad (ATS) of Uttar Pradesh claimed to have arrested an accused involved in converting international calls into local calls by passing the international gateway.
The arrest was made jointly with the local police in Jaunpur on Monday morning. The ATS team will now take the accused on remand to grill him to extract information of others involved in the racket.
According to an official communiqué released on Tuesday evening, for the past several days, sleuths of the ATS had been receiving information that international calls from foreign countries (mainly Middle
East countries) were being converted into local calls through illegal telephone exchanges by bypassing the international gateway in Jaunpur district.
Bypassing the international gateway makes it impossible to identify the caller, due to which there remains the possibility of radicalisation, hawala, terror funding related matters. Besides, there is also a loss of revenue.
Developing the intelligence through ground and electronics surveillance, the field unit of ATS (Varanasi) identified the illegal telephone exchange operating in the Baksha police station area of Jaunpur. The ATS team swung into action. Along with local police in Jaunpur, the ATS term arrested the accused, identified as Ashraf Ali, son of late Nisar Ali. He was said to be operating the illegal telephone exchange. The arrest was made on Monday morning and the ATS team recovered an illegal SIM box and its accompanying equipment.
The ATS claimed that the arrested accused was operating an illegal telephone exchange in his own house in the Dullipur village of Baksha police station area of Jaunpur. During the initial interrogation, the accused revealed that he used to sell clothes in Mumbai from 1997 to 2012, where he met Jahangir, a resident of Bhiwandi, Mumbai, who gave him information about Mohammed Ali from Saudi Arabia, and he started the conversation. Ali told the accused about the profit in the business of SIM box and said that if he was ready, he could make money sitting at home. He was told that he would have to arrange for the
Internet, a laptop and a room. The accused was provided the equipment related to the SIM box by Ali through courier and it was configured through AnyDesk software.
The arrested accused further disclosed that Ali had sent the profit earned in the business to his bank account.
Sometimes money was also sent in cash through a local person. In this way, a profit of about Rs 1 lakh was made in a month. Ashraf Ali used to land international calls through the Internet on the SIM box by bypassing the international gateway, due to which VoIP (internet) calls got converted into normal voice calls and instead of the caller’s number, the caller's number displayed to the receiver was of the SIM installed in the SIM box. Due to this, the identity of the original caller could not be established.
In connection with the above action, FIR No. 231/2024 under sections 219(2)/318(4)/319(2)/61(2) BNS, 4/20/21/25 Indian Telegraph Act 1885 and 3/6 Indian Wireless Act has been registered at the Baksha police station in Jaunpur.
Retailers providing pre-activated SIMs in large numbers and other members of this gang are also on the ATS radar.
