BHUBANESWAR: Police have busted a SIM box racket with links to Bangladesh and arrested a West Bengal native, Raju Mondal (30), for allegedly installing the devices in capital city’s Mahadev Nagar area.
Acting on a tip-off, Laxmisagar police conducted a raid at a rented accommodation in Mahadev Nagar on Friday and nabbed Mondal. Five operational and two reserved SIM boxes were seized from him.
Police also seized 225 operational SIM cards inserted in the devices, 500 new and 58 old and unused Airtel SIM cards, two wireless routers, one laptop, a modem, an inverter and other articles from hi m.
“The SIM boxes were used to receive voice over internet protocol (VoIP) calls from foreign countries like Pakistan, China and Middle East. The gang members utilised the devices, consisting of fake SIM cards obtained from West Bengal, to route international calls as local calls possibly to commit cyber crime,” Police Commissioner Sanjeeb Panda told the mediapersons on Saturday.
Mondal, belonging to North 24-Parganas district, got the SIM boxes and fake SIM cards from a Bangladeshi national identified as Asdur Jamman and installed the devices here in October last year.