Accused used to take houses on rent, route international voice calls as local calls 

Mysore/Mysuru: Narasimharaja (NR) Police have arrested two persons who were involved in routing international calls as local calls and have seized various equipment used to route the calls illegally. Last month, the City Crime Branch (CCB) sleuths had busted a SIM box fraud and had arrested a Kerala-based man who was running an illegal telephone exchange at his house at Kamanakerehundi near Old Kesare here. 

First, the CCB Police had arrested Shameem from Kerala who routed international voice calls made on Indian phone numbers using his illegal telecom set-up and thereby causing loss to the Government and telephone companies. Shameem bypassed the legal gateway and had bypassed International Subscriber Dialling (ISD) protocols and licences.

Based on the clues provided by Shameem, the N.R. Police  now have arrested Ashraf and Jithin, also from Kerala for being a part of the racket. The arrests have revealed that there is an elaborate network of people who are running the illegal telephone exchange using the SIM box and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology which helped them route international calls as local calls.

 The modus operandi of the criminals is to take houses on rent, purchase the equipment related that will facilitate the illegal operations and also contact a dedicated network of customers. Equipment is usually purchased online or they are in touch with local technicians who are well-versed with the telephone and internet systems.

 The accused who have been arrested now too took houses on rent at N.R. Mohalla, Yadavagiri and Kumbarakoppal to run the illegal racket. During the raid, the Cops seized 15 SIM boxes having 32 ports, 16 D-Link Wi-Fi Router with SIM slot and other equipment. 

The Police said that the accused placed calls through VoIP and such calls are hard to trace and in turn can become a major security threat. Moreover, the callers cannot be identified.