Wednesday, 01 May 2024 | PNS | DEHRADUN
A joint operation by the Uttarakhand unit of Department of Telecommunication UP West LSA along with Special Task Force (STF) Uttarakhand Police unearthed a huge capacity illegal international telecom setup in a commercial building at GMS Road in Dehradun. The operation was conducted on Monday. According to officials, the setup was posing a grave threat to national security besides causing huge financial loss to the government exchequer and telecom licensees. The setup was run by one Anurag Gupta, of Spectrum Infoweb Solutions Private Limited on the second floor of MM Tower on GMS Road. The accused was using new era software driven technology for manipulating the Caller Line Identification (CLI) and then routing 500 calls at a time from foreign countries to India via illegal route of the internet, bypassing the legal ILD and NLD gateways of India. An FIR has been lodged at Vasant Vihar police station under various sections of the Indian Telegraph Act and Indian Penal Code. Officials further informed that the items seized during the raid include mobile phones, laptops, personal computers, LAN switches, media converters, modems, IBM servers, monitors, printer connecting cables and other items. This illegal telephone exchange had a capacity of handling 500 international calls simultaneously using 500 fixed telephone numbers. It was causing huge financial loss to the government and telecom companies. These calls were then routed towards Indian telephone/mobile numbers through high-capacity servers and software tools and terminated the calls to the destination numbers in India using PRI/SIP trunk facility. The setup was fully automatic and running with minimum requirement of manpower or hardly any. The total financial loss to the government exchequer and involvement of foreign parties linked to this setup are under assessment. As the international calls were being routed through high speed internet lines and then further terminated within India over local telephone lines through PRI/SIP channels, this fraudulent telecom setup was bypassing the legal international call gateway and manipulating the Caller Line Identification (CLI). The route from foreign countries to India was internet based, hence it was very difficult for Indian law enforcement agencies to monitor and back trace to any type of doubtful call involved by criminals like those running hawala rackets, dealing narcotics or involved in anti national activities. Thus it was posing a grave threat to national security as antisocial and anti-national elements may misuse such illegal unmonitored call facility, officials said.
