Five people, including two former managers of different multinational telecom companies, have been arrested by Madhya Pradesh’s cyber cell police for activating about 7000 SIM cards in fictitious names and selling them to fraudsters across the country, officials said.
The accused include Rohit Bajaj, a resident of Indore, and Ritesh Kannojiya, Amit Soni, Ashfaq Ahmed and Nishant Patel, all from Jabalpur.
They were arrested on Monday under section 419 (punishment for cheating by personation), 465 (punishment for forgery), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 120 b (punishment for criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and under certain sections of information technology act, police said.
“Ex-managers of two telecom companies Rohit Bajaj and Ritesh Kannojiya hatched a conspiracy to release the SIM cards in bulk in the name of fake companies and later Amit Soni got it activated through fake verification,” Jabalpur’s superintendent police (SP) Ankit Shukla said.
Ankit said the police investigation started after Narendra Kumar Mishra, a resident of Jabalpur, lodged a complaint that someone had hacked into his Facebook account and was sending messages to his friends demanding money.
“When police investigated, the SIM card was found in the name of an employee of a private company named IA Services. In further investigation, it was found that 90 SIMs were released in the name of the company that is a fake one and exist only on papers,” said Shukla.
The SP said the company’s owner Ashfaq Ahmed was arrested and during his interrogation, he told the police about the nexus.
“Amit Soni used to provide SIM cards to Nishant Patel. Patel used to sell SIM cards at a higher price to fraudsters who committed various crimes including matrimonial fraud, OLX fraud, e-wallet fraud, social media fraud and others,” said Shukla.
