Six arrested for duping telecom companies

NEW DELHI - Delhi Police Friday arrested six people who allegedly duped telecom service providers including Vodafone, Airtel and Aircel of crores of rupees.

“The accused - Mohammad Danish Saifi, Chitresh Sharma, Agnishwar Basu Ray, Jitender Singh, Prashant Kumar and Jaspreet Singh - used to get corporate account SIM cards with international roaming by producing forged documents,” a police official said.

The accused used to make international calls from Nepal in order to prevent the service provider company from locating their current location.

“Saifi received Rs.3 lakh through hawala (illegal money remittances) in lieu of those international calls which was distributed among the associates. They used to raise the bill of more then Rs 50.lakh and then used to dispose off the SIM cards,” the official said.

Police acted on a complaint filed by the Vodafone Essar company that some unknown people had obtained 20 mobile phone SIM cards and also got activated international roaming on the basis of forged documents in the name of I-Gate Company through its “proprietor” Ray.

Police Thursday received some information about Ray who was residing in Mahipalpur area in South Delhi and he was arrested. Based on information from him, the other five were arrested.

Investigations revealed that Sharma had arranged 20 SIM cards of the company in the name of I-Gate company, in collusion with his associates in which two Vodafone company officials were also involved.

Police said that since the last one year, the gang had cheated Vodafone of Rs.3.5 crore, Bharti Airtel of Rs.1 crore and Aircel of Rs.1.6 crore.