JOIN USWith the joint expert committee constituted by the department of telecommunication (DoT), New Delhi, instructing the cellular service providers to lodge a complaint if the forged documents were used to secure a SIM card, the role Mysore police played in busting the similar racket two years ago needs a mention.
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the city police were also the first to unravel the racket that was indeed mammoth, considering the number of mobile SIM cards that had been issued by forging the documents of the genuine customers, according to then police commissioner Sunil Agarwal.
What started initially with eight cases eventually reached up to 81 cases opening a can of worms. From managers to sales executives, and in some cases even the distributors were booked for the fraud following complaints from the genuine parties.
Nearly one lakh SIM cards had been issued in the similar manner including Mysore, Mandya, Bangalore, Hubli, Mangalore among other districts in the state. It was also the reason, Criminal Investigation Department (CID) was entrusted with the task of further investigation. However, CID took up only eight cases, while the remaining are still vetted into by the city police. This despite the requisition made by the then police commissioner Sunil Agarwal to then DG and IG Ajai Kumar Singh, as the former could probe into the cases registered in his jurisdiction.
Surprisingly, till the investigators called on the genuine customers, they were unaware of being the victim of clandestine activities of the service provider/s. The investigators could zero in on the genuine customer after going through the customer acquisition forms (CAF) that had the list of different names but on the basis of a common document.
When contacted by Deccan Herald Sunil Agarwal who is now the Inspector General of Police at State Human Rights Commission (SHRC), Bangalore was happy to acknowledge that ‘Mysore police had already understood the gravity of such illegal activity’.
Said Agarwal- it’s a matter of coincidence that during his recently concluded training in Cambridge, United Kingdom and Hyderabad, ‘identity theft’ was also a matter of discussion. Identity theft could be either fabricating the documents for a SIM card, or duplicating the passport etc.,
The very case (Mysore police busting SIM card racket) had also reached DG and IGs meet in New Delhi then, with Sunil Agarwal making a presentation of the same.