JOIN USWith the arrest of three persons, including an engineer, the Uttar Pradesh Police on Sunday claimed to have busted an illegal telephone exchange being run here.
“A mini telephone exchange of BSNL was being run in Chawala complex, Maheshwari Nagar in Govind Nagar on GT Road,” SSP Swapnil Mamgai said.
“A large amount of accessories and equipment was recovered from racket members Nishant Sharma, Anil Bansal and Dhruv Singh, who were arrested on a tip-off,” he told reporters here.
Kingpin Nishant, a software engineer, has disclosed how he obtained SIM cards using fake IDs from a Lucknow-based man, Asad Khan.
According to Mamgai, Nishant had established contact with ‘Kunsi Network Company China’ on the internet for providing cheap international call facility. He said the racket also started providing the facility to foreigners through an improvised device later.
“Had the racket not been busted, the telephone exchange could have become an internal security threat to the country,” he said, while not ruling out the involvement of several others in the racket.
A total of 33 Reliance and 47 BSNL SIM cards have been recovered from the suspects, along with international gateway machines and other equipment, he said.
“The police had received a complaint regarding a sudden increase of load in the Maheshwari Nagar-based BSNL tower from telecom authorities sometime ago,” Mamgai said. Though SWAT and surveillance teams were entrusted with the task, the help of the army intelligence and ATF was also later sought, he said.