Daijiworld Media Network - Mangalore (SP)
Mangalore, Dec 11: The policemen belonging to Dakshina Kannada District Crime Intelligence Bureau successfully cracked a racket that was engaged in fraudulently operating an unauthorized telephone booth and making conference calls to foreign countries and thus inflicting heavy losses on the telecom department. Seven persons were arrested in this connection, on Tuesday December 9.
The arrested have been identified as Abdul Salam(32), A P Shiabuddin(32), Saifuddin (26), Rashid C M (22), Sarfuddin P T (21) and Sirajuddin P T (28), all from Malappuram district in Kerala, in addition to K K Mohammed (30) from Hosangady in Kundapur taluk. The policemen also seized 23 reliance landline telephone sets approximately valued at Rs 23,000, eight mobile phones and cash amounting to Rs 48,800 from the accused. The accused allegedly used these equipments to defraud the telephone department and make foreign calls.
DCIB inspector H N Venkatesh Prasanna and his team, acting on a tip off, raided an old building located in Bejai Battagudda in the city and arrested the accused, who were cladestinely operating from there.
The arrested people are facing charges of obtaining telephone connections illegally and without obtaining any authorization of the department, without getting allotted VAT number from the department of commercial taxes or any RC number. By producing election identity cards of some local people, they had obtained reliance telephone connections. Through these numbers, they made conference calls to foreign countries and defrauded the government to the extent of several lacs of rupees, the policemen said.
During interrogation, the policemen reportedly found out, that the accused wanted to flee from the city after amassing considerable money. The accused, who were produced in the court on the night of Wednesday, were handed over to the Urwa police station for investigation.