Citing sharp increase in crime rate attributed to those bearing fake mobile credential's and addresses, investigators continue hitting dead-end in crucial investigation owing to false customer details, the state police said on Monday. The police said it is mulling on booking cases of cheating, fraud against retailers among other charges. "In cases involving narcotics, prostitution false identity cases have reached beyond our threshold, investigations are hitting dead-end. Repeated warnings have gone unheeded, being a global tourist destination the state is likely to be soft target for unprecedented attack, so we are act proactively discouraging such practice," Superintendent of police Karthik Kashyap said. The authorities added that the service providers did not comply with the guidelines provided by DOT over verification of the customer credential before activating their mobile connections. "Almost no provider does physical verification of the address provided by the mobile subscribers, even when it comes to document verification or referral number there is laxity in compliance," Kashyap said at the stakeholders meet of service providers with the state police. Quoting five instances, the police officials specifically reprimanded both the service providers and retailers for issuing SIM cards for foreign nationals without even confirming passport details - who were later apprehended for being involved in narcotics. According to the officials, the jurisdictional Mapusa police station leads the numbers with 600 cases of criminals in possession of fake number. Retailer SIM card providers complained that earning Rs. 30 per subscription did not make it financially feasible to verify individuals customers and suggested that the SIM card companies to take the responsibility. While not demarcating deadline, the police officials demanded that both the retailers and service providing companies must firstly show 100 percent compliance with KYC guidelines or face prosecution. "Besides cheating and fraud cases, depending on the gravity of offence the state police officials will be adviced to book criminal cases against retailers and their higherups for aiding and crime under relevant sections of the IPC," Kashyap said. Besides the police added, while they had frequent cooperation from private mobile service poviders with regional headquarter at Pune, the Karnataka based companies did not cooperate.
