An official said that “The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) has smashed an illegal telephone exchange in Thane district that was able to direct international calls to appear as local ones and arrested a 40-year-old man,” on August 2.
“According to an official, The telephone exchange might have been employed for promoting terrorism and was being operated from Bhiwandi.”
“It is suspected that the facility has been operational over the past one and a half years and it may have resulted in loss of more than ₹3 crore for the government according to Department of Telecommunications (DoT) officials,” he said.
On July 31, based on a specific intelligence input, ATS raided an unauthorised telephone exchange located at New Gauripada and Roshan Baugh in Bhiwandi. He said, “The anti-terror agency also recovered nine SIM boxes, 246 SIM cards, eight routers and 191 antennas which were used in operation of the SIM boxes as well as one inverter.”
These sim cards take incoming voice-over-internet protocol (VoIP) international calls and direct them as local GSM calls through SIMs. This means that the calls seem like they are from where we are. “Apart from his accomplices who were working at the illegal telephone exchange for money there is also one Jafar Babu Usman Patel (40),” he added.
He added that “Bharatiya Nayaya Sanhita under Indian Telegraph Act ,Telecommunications Act,and Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act have been also registered against them.”
