Illegal Gujarat Phone Exchange resulted in ₹ 4 Crore loss to Government
By MYBRANDBOOK
An illegal telephone exchange busted in Navrangpura in Gujarat's Ahmedabad city a month ago caused a loss of ₹ 4 crore to the government as 43 lakh international calls were illegally converted into local ones using the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), Crime Branch officials said.
A month-long investigation has revealed a Bangladeshi national, identified only as Sheriyar, who is now in the UAE, is one of the masterminds of the racket, said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Chaitnya Mandlik.
Mandlik said, "We have already started the process to issue a lookout notice for Sheriyar, who is one of the masterminds behind this entire racket. This is for the first time in the country when an illegal telephone exchange running on an end-to-end communication system using SIP was busted. Within a span of one-and-half-months, the illegal exchange converted nearly 43 lakh international calls into local GSM calls and, thereby, caused a loss of ₹ 4 crore to the government."
Based on a specific tip off, a Crime Branch team along with Department of Telecom officials had raided a commercial complex in Navrangpura on December 4 and busted the illegal exchange, leading to the arrest of Sarkhej resident Tabrez Kataria from the site.
Primary investigation had revealed the accused was using SIP line and various cloud-based software and hardware as well as routers to convert VOIP calls coming from other countries into GSM or local calls, causing huge revenue loss to the country.
Days later, the city Crime Branch arrested Dwayne Pereira and his accomplice Riyaz Shaikh, both residents of Pune, Maharashtra, who are associated with a firm there that provides communication related technical support.
To earn more money, the duo took support of one Farzan Ali Qadri, a resident of Kodinar, and opened this illegal telephone exchange after acquiring SIP line and leased line in the name of Qadri's associate Tabrez in the garb of running a call centre.
The duo then roped in Kerala native Rafiq Babu and Bangladesh national Sheriyar, both currently in UAE, to divert international calls from UAE and other Gulf countries to this exchange and convert them into local calls.
The officials explained, video calls using applications such as Whatsapp are banned in Gulf countries, due to which Indians living there have to pay ISD rates to make international calls here, and such an illegal exchange bypasses this mechanism through the use of calling cards sold by the accused.
Singapore to remove One-Time Passwords from Bank Accounts
According to the Monetary Authority of Singapore, clients who utilise secur...
Is 375 million Airtel subscribers database breached?
When a hacker claims to have accessed and put up for sale a customer databa...
The government of India intends to construct a single portal f
A single portal will be launched by the Indian government to list all of it...
OpenAI offers GPT-4o, a faster model available to all users at
GPT-4o, a faster and more sophisticated AI model, is made available to all...
Icons Of India : B.V.R. Subrahmanyam
A 1987 batch (Chhattisgarh cadre) Indian Administrative Service Office...
ICONS OF INDIA : RITESH AGARWAL
Ritesh Agarwal is an Indian billionaire entrepreneur and the founder a...
Icons Of India : AMIT CHADHA
Amit Chadha serves as the CEO and Managing Director of L&T Technology ...
C-DOT - Center of Development of Telematics
India’s premier research and development center focused on telecommu...
UIDAI - Unique Identification Authority of India
UIDAI and the Aadhaar system represent a significant milestone in Indi...
PFC - Power Finance Corporation Ltd
PFC is a leading financial institution in India specializing in power ...
Indian Tech Talent Excelling The Tech World - Aneel Bhusri, CEO, Workday
Aneel Bhusri, Co-Founder and Executive Chair at Workday, has been a le...
Indian Tech Talent Excelling The Tech World - ARVIND KRISHNA, CEO – IBM
Arvind Krishna, an Indian-American business executive, serves as the C...
Indian Tech Talent Excelling The Tech World - REVATHI ADVAITHI, CEO- Flex
Revathi Advaithi, the CEO of Flex, is a dynamic leader driving growth ...