New Delhi, May 30 (UNI) In a joint operation, the Mumbai Police's Crime Branch and Jammu and Kashmir's Military Intelligence (MI) unit have busted a large spy network: using illegal VoIP, agents have made calls on the civil exchange of the Army's 14 Corps, demanding information on Army deployment and the status of the Ladakh stand-off.
A suspect has been arrested in Mumbai. A probe is underway to identify more culprits.
As per the sources, in May, defence persons received calls from suspicious numbers, seeking information related to Ladakh Region and important defence installations.
“The callers posed fictitious identity and the involvement of ISI was suspected,” source said, adding , “Further investigation by Military intelligence and Crime Branch Mumbai Police revealed few illegal VoIP exchanges at Mumbai, which route calls incoming from Pakistan to local numbers, which were then used to extract information from defence persons.”
The exchanges which converted international voice calls originating from Pakistan into local GSM calls using the Chinese SIM Boxes (boxes fitted with GSM SIM cards of local cellular service providers) have been busted in a Police raid on 28th May.
These SIM boxes also used dynamic IMEI system, which made them difficult to be tracked.
This system is declared illegal by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.
Investigations so far have revealed that the busted exchanges caused revenue losses in crores to the country’s telecom department.
Subsequent probe had then revealed that those exchanges were being used by hostile intelligence agencies to seek military information through calls and posed security threat to nation.
While one arrest has been made in Mumbai and probe is underway to ascertain identity of more individuals who are involved and locations of other similar exchanges. More arrests are likely in the matter in coming days, as they might also be linked to compromising of country’s internal security, a senior official added.
A total of three functional sim boxes and one standby sim box along with 191 sim cards, laptop modem; antennas; batteries and connectors have been recovered.
UNI ASH SHK1955