The city police on Friday arrested a Kolathara native, who was allegedly part of a gang that operated parallel telephone exchanges in various parts of Kozhikode district, using a dedicated broadband internet connection and call routing device. The suspect, P. Jurise, 26, son of Saithalavi, was nabbed on a tip-off received by Deputy Commissioner of Police, Swapnil Madhukar Mahajan.
According to the police, the youth, along with his partners in the crime, was engaged in converting international telephone calls into local calls using the illegal telephone network.
The paid parallel service had caused a huge revenue loss to the government and the licensed service providers in the sector, they said.
In the surprise inspections, the police had found five buildings which functioned as parallel exchanges in the city for facilitating the illegal service.
The buildings were identified with the support of the Kasaba police.
According to the investigating team, the Nallalam police had also received confidential information recently about the illegal operation of such gangs.
A team of 23 officers took part in the week-long investigation led by Kasaba Circle Inspector U.K. Shajahan to burst the illegal network.
It was on Thursday that they carried out a flash checking simultaneously in all the suspected buildings. The officials said a search was on to nab the rest of the suspects in the fraud.
