BHOPAL: Fifteen states could be aiding Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in funding its spying operations in India, investigations by the MP police ATS have revealed. Over 100 parallel or illegal telephone exchanges are operating from obscure cubbyholes.
Out of the 100-odd phone exchanges operating with the help of Chinese SIM boxes/SIM banks, over 50 are located in South and East India, particularly Hyderabad, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Kerala and Karnataka, a senior MP police official told The Sunday Standard.
Remaining 50-plus exchanges are located in mega cities—Delhi, Mumbai and Pune, but the maximum 10-15 such exchanges are operating in Hyderabad, the official said.
“These exchanges have incurred losses worth `3,000 crore to the country’s telecom department by illegally converting international calls emanating from VoIP gateways into local GSM calls,” the official added.
“Through these exchanges, calls were made into India
at rates of `2-3 per minute. This caused a loss of 35-40 paise per minute to telecom department, but earned profits ranging between `1.5 lakh and `2 lakh per month to the exchange operators,” said an MP ATS officer.
Sources said of this loss, `1,400-plus crore could have been inflicted by exchanges in Delhi, Mumbai and Pune. The MP police have already shared location specific details of exchanges with the central intelligence agencies.
The raids by MP ATS at such exchanges operating from Bhopal, Gwalior and Jabalpur towns, last month, revealed that these exchanges were being used by ISI handlers in Pak to dupe people in India via phone lottery fraud. The crime money worth `20 crore was being parked in bank accounts in Satna and Rewa districts of MP by three local men for commission.
A portion of the crime money was also being channelised back to Pakistan via a man Mohd Jabbar, who was into export-import trade in Old Delhi’s Jama Masjid area.“Till now 15 people have been arrested in the case,” said Sanjeev Shami, IG of MP ATS.