Police seeks DoT’s help to solve mystery of calls from 15-digit numbers

In a letter to the Department of Telecom last week, Delhi Police has shared the list of the 15-digit numbers and requested to find out from where these calls are coming and why they are coming to the '100' number.

Delhi Police PCR unit is receiving over 600 calls daily from “mysterious 15-digit” phone numbers, and it has now approached Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to trace their origin and suggest ways to deal with the situation. “A mobile number contains 10 digits while a landline number contains eight digits. But in the last couple of weeks, we have been receving calls from 15-digit numbers. When our officers pick up the calls, there is no response from the other end,” said a senior police officer.

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In a letter to the Department of Telecom last week, Delhi Police has shared the list of the 15-digit numbers and requested to find out from where these calls are coming and why they are coming to the ‘100’ number. The PCR unit daily handles around 27,000 calls daily, out of these almost 40 per cent turn out to be blank calls.

The officer said they have been receiving close to 600-700 calls from the 15-digit numbers and it has become a “mystery” for them. It is suspected that the 15-digit number that flashes when a call comes is the IMEI number of the mobile phone, and it might be happening because people are pressing the ‘5’ or ‘9’ number keys on the cellphone.

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“Feature phones can invoke the emergency call by pressing ‘Numeric key 5’ or ‘Numeric key 9’ on the phone’s keypad. We are suspecting that by pressing ‘5’ or ‘9’ calls goes through to the emergency number 100 even without a SIM.

“It is still not clear but it is felt that this is the reason why the calls from 15-digit numbers are landing in our system,” he added.

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