Shillong, May 12 (IANS): The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has detected around 1.52 lakh suspected fake mobile connections subscribed based on forged documents in six states of the northeast region, officials said on Thursday.

DoT officials said that more than 1.47 lakh mobile connections that failed in the re-verification process have been disconnected by the Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) in Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura.

So far, the TSPs have blacklisted 493 Points of Sale (PoS) and registered 71 police complaints against the suspected PoS for further investigation and necessary action against the culprits.

Cyber crimes, financial frauds and anti-social activities are mainly committed through SIMs fraudulently subscribed on the basis of forged documents.

In order to detect and weed out such suspected SIMs, the DoT has taken up the initiative of conceptualising and implementing an innovative and indigenous artificial intelligence and facial recognition powered solution for telecom SIM subscriber verification (ASTR).

The system uses subscriber images and a database of TSPs to detect fraudulent subscriptions.