Four Arrested By Kolkata Police In Fake SIM Card Racket

Kolkata: Four persons have been arrested by the Kolkata Police on charges of getting mobile SIM cards issued fraudulently in the names of people who were not even aware of their existence.

These SIM cards were then utilised to commit various cyber crimes. It is also being investigated whether such SIM cards were distributed among those involved in anti-national activities.

“Those arrested include Anirban Saha (28), his wife Deblina Chakraborty (24) and Ripan Saha (22). All three were arrested from a room inside Anirban’s house in Kestopur, under the Baguiati police station. Ripan is a resident of Rampurhat in the Birbhum district,” Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Rupesh Kumar told reporters on Wednesday.

Similarly, Sobham Debnath, a resident of Habra in North 24- Parganas, was arrested from Beliaghata, he said.

According to him, the items seized included eight mobile phones, five biometric authentication machines and 237 SIM cards belonging to service providers JIO and Airtel. These included both raw and pre-activated cards. Four others had been arrested earlier in the same case.

It has come to light during investigation that that the accused got two Point of Sales (POS) terminals allotted to them by the service providers. They used some material on the biometric authentication machines that helped them illegally store fingerprints of common people who visited their kiosk to buy SIM cards. These fingerprints were later used to get more SIM cards activated fraudulently in the names of unsuspecting people. These SIM cards were then sold to cyber crooks across the country.

“We launched an investigation after receiving several complaints of cyber crime, in which the person using the SIM card and the one who it was allotted to are not the same. It soon came to light that some authorised agents of these two service providers took advantage and issued SIM cards in the names of common people for use by cyber criminals. Investigations are continuing,” Kumar said.