SIM box seizure: Nine persons held in Mumbai

Bhubaneswar/Mumbai: In a major development of the SIM box seizure case in Berhampur, in which four persons were arrested for alleged link-ups with underworld don Chotta Rajan, the Thane Police Crime Branch in Mumbai arrested nine persons on Tuesday.

The Thane Crime Branch team had conducted simultaneous raids on 30 locations and had seized 25 SIM boxes, 438 SIM cards, 40 routers, laptop, mobile, computer and various other materials from the accused.

The accused were identified to be residents of Uttar Pradesh with educational qualification from Class V to Plus II. They used to threaten various national and international businessmen through the SIM cards and extort money from them, informed the Crime Branch.

Meanwhile, police is interrogating the arrested persons to find out how they procured SIM cards in such a large number.

“A total of 25 SIM boxes were recovered with 438 SIM cards of major companies including Reliance, Airtel, Aircel, Vodafone, BSNL and Idea. The years of operation, their identities, the mastermind behind the operations will be investigated by us,” said Thane Joint Commissioner of Police Madhukar Pandey.

It is worthwhile to mention that four persons were arrested by Gopalpur police on July 8, 2017 after an extortion call to a Mumbai-based realtor was traced to a SIM box in their possession. Police had seized five SIM boxes, several fake SIMs and fake ID proofs from them.

Odisha Crime Branch had informed they had brought the SIM boxes from Hyderabad whereas the SIM cards were collected from different places in Odisha.

The four accused were running a telephone exchange business in guidance of Delhi and Ahmedabad-based agencies under the name ‘S-World’ while using the five SIM boxes.

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