The Hindu : New Delhi News : SIM card cloning case detected, 7 held

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Feb 02, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

SIM card cloning case detected, 7 held

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, FEB. 1. In probably the first case of Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) SIM card cloning detected in the country, the South-West Delhi police have arrested seven people on charges of duping a mobile service provider of over Rs. 9 lakhs by arranging international calls through the cloned cards from Saudi Arabia. A laptop, two SIM readers, software and several mobile phones have been recovered in the operation.

According to the Deputy Commissioner of Police, Deependra Pathak, mobile service provider, Hutch, lodged a complaint that the SIM cards with international roaming facility issued by it were being misused by Paramjit Singh, purportedly the owner of Dusmesh Gas Cuts being run from a rented accommodation at Dwarka. The accused had applied for 32 such cards on December 14. Initially, his request was turned down as Hutch suspected his credentials. But, through vigorous bargaining on security amount, Paramjit managed to get two cards with international roaming facility on December 31. And within two days, calls worth Rs. 9 lakhs -- originating from Saudi Arabia -- were made through the cards raising suspicion that they were being misused. Subsequently, a team comprising Inspector Dharambir Singh and Sub-Inspectors Rajender Singh, Vivek Maheshwari and Ravinder Tyagi took up the probe.

The team arrested two gang members, identified as Anand Aggarwal and Anoop, who worked for Paramjit. At their instance, the police arrested Mohammad Yunus from Viraval in Gujarat and Vinod Choubey from Palwal in Haryana. During interrogation, they disclosed that their accomplice, Mohammad Aslam, who operated from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, was in his Pratapgarh house in Uttar Pradesh. He was also arrested.

In the meantime, Paramjit was also arrested from East Delhi.

The accused were put to interrogation. It came to light that the gang had in fact cloned the SIM cards and sent them to Saudi Arabia to be used to make calls to India without detection. The cloning was allegedly done by a computer expert, Prem Swaroop Pahuja, a resident of Jangpura Extension. He was also arrested and a laptop SIM readers, 15 compact discs containing CDMA software, chargers, 21 mobile phones, 250 fake voters I.D. cards and letterheads of various companies recovered from his house.

Aslam revealed that he and Vinod, expert at cloning CDMA SIM cards, worked as a tailor in Riyadh. They had a wide network of unscrupulous elements in India and the Middle-East. They came in touch with Pahuja who could clone GSM SIM cards. They all planned to obtain SIM cards with international roaming facility, clone them and use them for making the calls and vanish from the scene to avoid payments to the service provider. The accused floated a fake company, Dasmesh Gas Cuts and applied for the SIM cards. After Paramjit managed to get two cards, Pahuja allegedly downloaded their details using SIM reader and then fed them in two other cards within half-an-hour. The cards were then sent to Saudi Arabia and within hours calls began originating from there.

The accused said they charged about Rs. 400 for 20 minutes of calls from Saudi Arabia to India, which was very less than the amount charged by authentic international call providers. Hence, they had a large number of customers.

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