Chinese mobiles case: Court dismisses bail plea of 23 traders

A Delhi court today dismissed the bail plea of 23 traders who were arrested here on the charges of selling Chinese made mobile handsets without unique identity numbers.

At present there is sufficient material against the accused to presume that they were concerned with the offence of cheating as well as forgery or cloning of the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number on mobile phones, Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Ajay Pandey said.

Dismissing the bail applications of the traders by a common order,the court said the IMEI inscribe on the recovered mobile sets were not allotted by the GSM Association,which is sole authority in this regard.

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Any IMIE number which has not been allotted by the GSMA is definitely bearing the forged IMEI number, the court said,adding that a large number of recovered mobile sets were bearing the same IMEI number.

Earlier,senior advocate Ramesh Gupta,appearing for the accused,had said the complaint of Indian Cellular Association (ICA) was motivated as it was filed at the behest of mobile companies whose business have been hit hard because of the low price of imported Chinese handsets. The recovered handsets were lawfully imported and the arrested traders had duly paid the customs and sales tax on them,Gupta said,adding no offence under the IPC was made out against traders.

They were arrested following the direction of the court ordering registration of an FIR.

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