DEHRADUN: The Uttarakhand Special Task Force has uncovered an illegal SIM-box telecommunications gateway operating from a house in Bajpur, Udham Singh Nagar, and arrested a 24-year-old man, officials said.
The operation was carried out by the STF’s Kumaon cybercrime team under “Operation Hotspot”, part of the state police’s campaign against cybercrime. Officials said the raid followed sustained intelligence gathering and coordination with the Department of Telecommunications.
Acting on a tip-off, the team searched a house near the Idgah in Bajpur’s Mudiya locality. Police arrested Kadir, son of Jabir Ali, a resident of Berkhera Chak village under Bhagatpur police station in Uttar Pradesh’s Moradabad district.
Two 32-slot SIM boxes, 77 antennas, 114 Airtel SIM cards, an internet router and a Samsung A35 mobile phone were seized from the premises. Investigators also recovered LAN and USB cables, connectors, power adapters, a fibre wire, a media converter, an extension board and other telecommunications equipment.
Police said the unauthorised gateway had allegedly been operating for around seven months. The system was being used to convert overseas and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls into calls appearing to originate from Indian mobile numbers.
As a result, recipients would see a domestic number instead of the caller’s foreign number, helping conceal the caller’s identity and location. Such gateways are frequently misused in “digital arrest” scams, impersonation fraud and other forms of cybercrime, besides causing revenue losses to the government and telecom operators.
“STF is taking effective action, using advanced cyber-forensic tools and technical resources, against criminals who attempt to conceal their identity through technologies such as SIM boxes,” STF Senior Superintendent of Police Ajay Singh told the TNIE.
“The role of agents who supplied SIM cards using forged documents, as well as other people associated with the network, is also being investigated,” he added.
According to STF police officials, the SIM cards recovered from the gateway had allegedly been procured by misusing the identity documents of different individuals. Preliminary questioning also indicated that the suspect was in contact with cybercriminals based in Bangladesh and allegedly received financial benefits through them.
Police said Kadir had previously been arrested in 2023 by Katghar police in Moradabad in connection with another illegal telecommunications gateway operated through a SIM box. He is currently out on bail in that case.
The STF is now examining his suspected cybercrime network, overseas links, bank accounts and possible associates. Investigators are also trying to establish the source of the SIM cards and determine whether calls routed through the gateway were linked to reported cyber-fraud cases.
A first information report has been registered under the relevant legal provisions, and further investigation is underway, officials said.
