West Bengal: Illegal telephone exchange busted, 1 arrested

An illegal telephone exchange, which allegedly caused loss of revenue to the Department of Telecom, was busted in Howrah early on Saturday. A 38-year-old man, identified as Sunil Shaw, was arrested. Special Task Force (STF) officers suspect that more people were involved in the racket.

Acting on a months-long inputs by the Military Intelligence Unit of Lucknow, the STF of the Kolkata Police raided the exchange at the Beni Madhab Mukherjee lane and seized several SIM boxes, SIM cards and phones.

“The raid was the result of inputs shared by the Military Intelligence Unit, Lucknow, over a period of eight months. The illegal telephone exchange was operating with the use of the SIM box technology,” said a senior STF officer. A SIM box can bypass the cellular provider and route the call through internet. STF officials said the exchanged was posing a risk to the national security.

The FIR was lodged at the Kasba police station on December 4 under IPC sections 419 (cheating by personation), 420 (cheating), 465 (forgery), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using a forged document/electronic record as genuine) and 120B (criminal Conspiracy).

During the raid, the STFteam was accompanied by the local police and officials from the Department of Telecommunication.

Three SIM boxes each with 32 slots for SIM cards, one SIM box with 16 slots, two SIM boxes each with 64 slots, two laptops, a smartphone, two features phones and 175 SIM cards of a cellular service provider have been seized from the premises.