The Hindu : New Delhi News : International phone racket smashed, man arrested

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, May 20, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

International phone racket smashed, man arrested

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, MAY 19. One person has been arrested by the Special Cell of the Delhi police for allegedly running an illegal international telephony racket from four different centres in Delhi and Gurgaon. The police have recovered several equipment used in setting up the illegal exchanges.

According to the police, the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) informed the Special Cell about illegal telephone exchanges being run from different places in and around the Capital. A team comprising Special Cell sleuths and officials from the DoT, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited and Reliance carried out raids at the four places on Tuesday.

These centres were being run at Mansarovar Garden and Jhandewalan in the Capital and Udyog Vihar and Sector-34 in Gurgaon. One person, identified as Naveen Kumar Grover, a resident of Mansarovar Garden, was arrested.

The police recovered several equipment, like modems, transformers, cables, computer, networking equipment, cellular phones, WLL phones and other costly accessories, used in telephony from all the four centres.

During interrogation, Naveen told the police that in September 2003 he came in contact with Nicholas Soo, a resident of the United States working for private company in the US, who gave him the idea about opening international telephone exchange, through the internet. Subject to certain conditions, such exchanges are legal in the US, but in India such ventures require licence.

In order to set up the exchanges, Naveen bought 90 phone connections from different service providers. These phones were directly connected to the internet. The lease lines were taken from various service providers like Dishnet DSL, VSNL and BSNL.

According to the Deputy Commissioner of Police (Special Cell), Ashok Chand, the racket, which involved bypassing licenced operators and government authorisation, was bringing huge profits not only through the customers who paid for the calls, but also by saving a huge amount on account of not paying any fees to the government. In fact, the government had been incurring a loss of about Rs. 75 lakhs a month.

The police, therefore, suspect that in the past nine months the government has been deprived of roughly Rs. 7 crores in revenue.

This is the second such racket detected by the police in the past one year. In a racket busted earlier, the illegal operators had set up exchanges and were facilitating international calls for the Indian relatives of people living in Dubai.

In that case too, the culprits here were helped by the fact such an operation is considered legal in those countries. Meanwhile, further investigations in the case are on.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

New Delhi