Jalpaiguri: Cops arrest one for running ‘international telephone exchange racket’

Siliguri: Interrogations have unearthed that Sabir Ali, the person arrested from Jatiakali in Jalpaiguri, could have been running a private international telephone exchange. A few residents of Siliguri allegedly used the SIM box service provided by him to frequently call foreign countries, including China and Japan.

Ali was arrested on Thursday, leading to the recovery of the SIM boxes by the Special Operation Group (SOG), Detective Department (DD), and Police of New Jalpaiguri Police Station. He was produced at the Jalpaiguri Court and remanded to police custody on Friday.

Based on intelligence, joint police teams raided a Jatiyakali store near the India-Bangladesh border. There, they seized three SIM boxes with numerous slots, 93 SIM cards, technical gadgets, counterfeit voter and Aadhaar cards, licenses, and other documents.

Police suspected that the owner of the store, Sabbir Ali, had been running an illegal telephone exchange racket by using these SIM box machines, causing a loss of revenue to the Department of Telecom. The 28-year-old Sabbir is a resident of Kuyarbari, very close to the Indo-Bangladesh border. He had been running this store for the past two years.

A SIM box, also called a SIM bank, is a device used as part of a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) gateway installation. A SIM box can have SIM cards from different mobile operators installed, permitting it to operate with several GSM gateways located in various places.

During questioning, Sabir Ali claimed to have received the SIM boxes from a Kolkata resident years ago.

Several Siliguri residents reportedly made international calls, raising concerns about potential terrorist links due to the area’s proximity to the India-Bangladesh border.

Central agencies are probing the matter alongside local authorities. Debashish Bose, ACP of Siliguri Metropolitan Police, said: “He has been taken into remand. An investigation has been started.”