538 dodgy sim cards seized

AHMEDABAD: As part of a planned crack down on the bookie network just ahead of the ICC cricket world cup, the city crime branch sleuths on Saturday seized 538 sim cards which were activated on fake identities and arrested four accused involved in the racket.
Crime branch inspector Jobdas Gadame arrested kingpin Digvijaysingh Jadeja, who was dealing in sim cards without being nominated an official agent or dealer of the service provider company, from a shop named Paldi store.
"We have also arrested a man named Sanjay Seth, a resident of Motera, who used to provide identity proofs such as election cards and driving license to Jadeja to get the sim cards activated. Seth used to get such identity proofs from Ajay Gajera and Rakesh Patel, who used to work as cards dealers in the past. We have arrested Gajera and Patel," said a crime branch official.
The officials have also seized 877 fake identity forms which are used to get the sim cards activated. Apart from that, cops have also found about 4,000 fake identities such as photos and other documents from the computer recovered from Sanjay.
"During primary interrogation of the accused it came to light that while working Gajera and Patel used to scan photographs and identity proofs of the customers who used to approach them for sim cards and then store such proofs in the computer. They then used to sell such fake identity forms to activate sim cards at Rs 4 per form," said Gadame.
Assistant commissioner of police, crime branch, M D Chaudhry said all the four accused are on police remand for four days.
"We suspect that the sim cards got on fake identity proofs were to be used by people involved in cricket betting and other criminal activities. Such sim cards procured on fake identities were used by accused to execute serial blasts in the city in 2008," said Chaudhry.
Earlier in 2010, Vastrapur police had sized more that 100 sim cards activated on fake identities. In the same year, Rajkot police had also seized about 700 such sim cards.
The crime branch officials said they will also verify with the service providers whether proper verification of addresses and identity proofs supplied by the dealer had been done or not.