The District Crime Branch squad investigating the parallel telephone exchange case will seek the support of the Bengaluru police also for netting some of the inter-State operators in the illegal business. According to Crime Branch sources, there have been similar illegal telephone exchanges in Bengaluru city as well, which had been exposed by the local police.
In the first round of search carried out in different parts of Kozhikode city, the police had exposed eight parallel exchanges which transferred illegal internet calls from abroad to local phones. The call diversion violating the Telecom rules was facilitated using China-made call routers and hundreds of illegally obtained SIM cards.
Police officials, who were part of the first round of investigations in the first week of July, said there were around 700 SIM cards with the illegal exchange operators in Kozhikode district. In the verification process, it was found that all those SIM cards were obtained from States like Assam, West Bengal, and Karnataka. The cards were obtained using fake identity cards and misusing the local connections of some of the shareholders in the business.
Police sources said the Crime Branch team would mainly check whether the investors and operators in the illegal business had facilitated the communication of any extremist elements. Also, the possible misuse of the illegal network for the operation of gold smugglers’ gangs would be investigated.
Till date, only one person has been arrested in connection with the case. According to Crime Branch sources, more suspected operators, who colluded with the inter-State gang, would be netted in the days to come. They also hinted that a few Keralites, who supported its operations from abroad, would be interrogated in pace with the further probe.
The case initially investigated by the city police was handed over to the District Crime Branch recently following the suspicion that the illegal communication network was misused for facilitating untraceable secret communications between extremist elements. Also, it was found to be a grave case that requires the full-time technical support of the police cyber dome and the hi-tech crime inquiry cell.
