BHUBANESWAR : The Commissionerate Police on Tuesday busted a gang and nabbed its seven members including two employees of a private telecommunications service provider for allegedly selling pre-activated SIM cards outside Odisha without obtaining the required documents from the buyers.
A total 16,147 pre-activated SIM cards were seized from accused Maheswara Barik of Basudevpur, Rajanikanta Panigrahi of Motiganj in Balasore, Subrat Panigrahi of Adalpanka in Keonjhar, Sukant Das of Nasirpur, Srinibash Ghadai of Alauti, Rajesh Sethi of Aruha and Mangalamaya Mishra of Simulia.
“During investigation of a case registered by Saheed Nagar police, the gang involved in activating SIM cards by using fake identities and supplying them to criminals, especially outside Odisha was busted. Miscreants used to procure SIM cards without submitting their identity proof. About 110 mobile phones have also been seized from them,” DGP Abhay told reporters in a virtual briefing.
Maheswara and Rajanikanta were employed with a telecommunications company in Basudevpur and the five others were procuring SIM cards from the duo for sale in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, Maharashtra, among others.
Police Commissioner SK Priyadarsi said such pre-activated SIM cards are mostly used to commit cyber frauds. “While investigating a case, we came to know that the members of a gang were operating from a rented accommodation in Bhadrak and supplying pre-activated SIM cards outside Odisha,” he said. The SIM cards of different mobile service providers were activated by using the documents and photographs of hundreds of citizens without their knowledge.
Police suspect that over two lakh fake SIM cards were sold by the accused and many of them were converted through mobile number portability. “A case was registered in January this year based on a complaint of one Itishree Kanungo. Cyber criminals had stolen Rs 2.58 lakh from her account of which, we had managed to recover Rs 20,000. Further investigation led us to this gang and another case has been registered,” said police.