Mumbai police, Military Intelligence bust illegal VoIP exchanges; suspect ISI link

In a joint operation, the Mumbai police and Military Intelligence have busted illegal Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) exchanges being used by callers suspected to be linked to Pakistani spy agency ISI to gather information about important defence installations.

According to defence sources, raids were conducted in Uttar Pradesh's Noida and Changaramukulam in Kerala and two SIM boxes, each of which had 100 slots, nearly 200 SIM cards, routers, modems and other communication devices were seized.

Arrests have been made in Kerala and a probe is underway to ascertain identity of more people, who are involved in the running similar illegal exchanges.

More arrests are likely to be made as the entire illegal exercise could be an attempt to compromise internal security, defence sources said.

According to them, defence personnel in September last year received calls from suspicious numbers, seeking information related to important defence installations.

The callers had fictitious identities and the involvement of ISI was suspected, they said, adding investigation revealed illegal VoIP exchanges in Noida and in Kerala which routed incoming calls from Pakistan to local numbers.

The probe has found out that these exchanges also caused revenue losses running into crores to the telecom department as it is not permitted to transmit international VoIP calls through the normal telephone network.

NSD