Noida. The Special Task Force (STF) busted the gang operating the International Telephone Exchange and arrested three people from Sector-132 on Thursday. International voice calls were being made by the gang by landing them in private servers. Due to this, the Government of India was losing crores of rupees of revenue.
freeze eight lakh rupees
The leader of this gang operating in Noida is Gurugram’s Ashutosh Bora, who is a former Ranji player. Mohammad Shoaib of New Road police station Moolganj Kanpur and Abhishek Srivastava of Mirzapur have been arrested in the case. Five CPUs, four mobiles, WiFi router, Matrix software, 45 debit and credit cards of various banks have been recovered from the possession. Eight lakh rupees have been frozen in various accounts. The gang was active for the last two years.
Additional Superintendent of Police STF Noida Raj Kumar Mishra said that information was received about illegal operation of telephone exchange at B-7 Sify Data Center located in Sector-132. Along with the members of Department of Telecom and Tata Telecom Services Limited raided the center and busted the gang.
Gang leader Ashutosh Bora is BA pass. He has played Ranji Trophy cricket in Under-19 and Under-23 from Jharkhand but got involved in cheating due to poor performance in cricket.
By giving the greed of feeding Ranji Trophy, IPL to new players, they started cheating money. In the year-2021, in a similar fraud case, Ashutosh went to jail on May 22 from police station Azad Maidan, Mumbai. He was released on bail after being in jail for about three months.
At the same time, Anshulraj had complained to the Gurugram police about cheating of eight lakh rupees. In relation to which a case was registered about two years back in Police Station Sector-50 Gurugram (Haryana). Ashutosh went to jail in this case. He was released after being in jail for three months.
During his stay in jail, he met Sonu Kumar of Delhi. Ashutosh had learned illegal telephone exchange work from Sonu. Through Sonu, Ashutosh Bora was introduced to mastermind Mohammed Ali living in Dubai. Similarly, a server of Mohammad Ali is working in Dubai, which Ashutosh had connected to his illegal telephone exchange.
Bypassing the country’s telephone system, calls were being made at many places in the country by converting international calls from Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) to local networks. Due to which the telecom company was suffering loss of revenue. It was also being used in extortion, hawala etc. In connection with the disappearance of two children, calls were made to their families through this illegal telephone exchange. In this regard, a case has been registered in Police Station Old Industrial Panipat (Haryana) this year. Ashutosh was wanted in this case. Mohammad Ali used to send him money through hawala at the rate of 25 paise per minute.
About four cases are registered against Ashutosh in Mumbai, Gurugram, Panipat and Noida. Abhishek Srivastava, who is involved in the gang, is 12th pass. He had learned the work of computer hardware and net banking while living in Mirzapur. In the year-2021, an advertisement for a job was posted on Facebook. After that Ashutosh called him and took him for an interview. Come
At the behest of Shutosh, he integrated the illegal telephone exchange. The illegal telephone was running in the name of Durga Enterprises, which is a shell company. Mohammad Shoaib used to take care of the setup. They met her at Nestra company. For this work, Abhishek got 80 thousand rupees and Mohammad Shoaib got 40 thousand rupees.
Used to do fraud like this
The accused had maintained the entire setup. The accused used to take connection from Tata Telecom and connect it to the server through the gateway and control it from the internet. After this, international calling was used to land through the gateway in India. It did not show the location of foreign countries but the number of Tata Telecom was visible from Noida STD code.
Calls coming from Gulf countries were being diverted
The accused were calling people from several states of North India including Delhi-NCR by diverting calls coming from Gulf countries i.e. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Oman Bahrain etc. People living in Gulf countries were talking to their relatives for less money and the accused had made their own line apart from the Telecom Department and the Government of India, which did not cost any money. Due to this, people calling from abroad used to talk for less money. In such a situation, whatever money the arrested accused got was the entire dividend.
Loss of 25 lakhs every month to the central government
The company was already suffering loss due to fake telephone exchange. The Government of India was incurring a loss of about 25 lakh rupees every month. The accused were running separate telecom lines from servers and other technical means without the permission and knowledge of the Government of India. Due to this, people used to think that they are receiving calls through exchange from Noida’s number, but it was not so.
Case registered under these sections
Section 419 (Whoever cheats by impersonation), 420 (dishonesty), 467 (by making fake documents), 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) in Sector-126 Kotwali against the arrested accused. 471 (forgery of electronic records), 120B (when two or more persons agree to commit an offence) besides sections of the Indian Telegraph Act and the IT Act have been booked and sent to jail.