Kanpur, May 21 (IANS): An illegal telephone exchange racket has been busted by the Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terrorist Squad (UP ATS) in Kanpur.

The racket was involved in illegally converting calls coming from middle-east countries into local calls through telephone exchange.

The two accused, Mirza Asad and Shahid Jamal, have been arrested in the case. The illegal telephone exchanges were operating at three places in Kanpur.

The ATS has seized 13 functional and four sealed SIM boxes of telephone exchange, 4,000 preactivated SIM cards, a modem router and other electronic devices.

Asad and Jamal told police that Nazim Khan, one of the gang members, used to make international calls through the internet by bypassing the international gateway. These calls landed on the SIM box, that later converted the calls.

The caller's location and number were masked so that his identity could be concealed.

According to the ATS, due to bypassing of the international gateway, it is not possible to identify the caller. This could lead to radicalisation, hawala, terror funding and loss of revenue.

Retailers selling a huge number of preactivated SIMs are now under the police's radar. Many more arrests are likely to take place in the coming days.