FIR against five retailers for misusing Airtel Mitra

Five retail agents have been booked for misusing Bharti Airtel's Mitra app to upload forged address and identity documents in order to obtain duplicate SIM cards of genuine customers over the past nine months.

The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on Thursday booked the Point of Sale (PoS) retailers for forgery, impersonation, cheating and under appropriate sections of the Information Technology Act, following a complaint from a nodal officer of the telecom service provider. The offences were committed since at least January 1 this year.

The retailers allegedly used the Mitra app to upload the forged Proof of Address (POA) and Proof of Identity (POI) documents so as to obtain the duplicate SIM cards of genuine customers. They are also suspected to have allotted fancy phone numbers to persons with fake identities. These duplicate SIM cards may have also been used for committing online bank frauds, according to the complaint.

An internal enquiry by Airtel revealed a "deep-rooted nexus" between the PoS retailers and the impersonators.