Chinese Companies Behind the ISI Backed Illegal VOIP Exchange

A major development took place today in an illegal ISI backed sim card racket which was busted by Mumbai Crime Branch on the tip-off by Military intelligence last month.

The Crime branch which is investigating the entire racket said that there were three top Chinese companies behind the ISI backed illegal racket.

The work of these Chinese companies was to provide call traffic to the exchange. It has also been found that in seven months more than 30 lakh calls were made including calls to Defence establishment in J&K and Ladakh. These companies had made their own private dialers or calling mobile apps.

“Yes, we have got details of three Chinese companies which were involved in sending call traffic to the illegal call centre in Govandi,” said Joint Commissioner of Police Crime Santosh Rastogi.

Sources in Crime Branch also confirmed that the owner of the exchange Sameer Alhwari (38) confessed that he procured these SIM Boxes from China and some people from China paid him money to conduct this clandestine operation.

The accused earned Rs 11 lakh through an illegal telephone exchange. For six-and-a-half months, he diverted 30 lakh calls from overseas to India. Several calls were made from Kuwait, Dubai, Pakistan to the Defence Establishments in Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.

Sources said that no account to account transaction has been found in this investigation. The accused Alhwari had given his account number to Chinese counterpart who directly deposited money in his account through ATM. The Police is investigating the money trail.

Sources also suggested that one such call was received during which, the caller was inquiring about the number of jawans infected with Covid-19. The purpose of these SIM card centres is to make revenue losses to the government and make international calling cheap but sources in the crime branch suggest that this particular centre was being used to make calls to the defence establishments in the country.

Investigations revealed that two numbers of the same service provider registered in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh were used to divert calls. Police said Indian people who might have a business interest in China was helping him.

In February this year, the crime branch busted a similar racket operating from Noida in Uttar Pradesh and Changaramkulam in Kerala. Police seized a total of eight SIM boxes and recovered 686 SIM cards from the raids in the two cities.

Last month during a raid 223 SIM Cards, 5 SIM Boxes, Laptops and 10 Mobile Phones were recovered.

Source: TimesNowNews