Bengaluru: Duplicate SIM activation shops raided, four held

BENGALURU: Central Crime Branch sleuths raided three mobile phone accessory shops in Hanumanth Nagar and arrested four people who were selling SIM cards after duplicating other subscribers’ documents.

The accused, Nagaraju, (24), N. Ramesh, (33), N. Jagadish, (30)  and Ravi Kumar, (28), are  owners of SMS Accesories (two shops)  and SLN Accessories situated near PES College and Sri Nagar area. They created duplicate the documents to activate SIM cards and sell them in the black market for higher prices.

The accused got a commission of Rs 10 for every SIM card. They would sell the activated SIM cards without documents for a price of Rs 100 to people. Preliminary investigations revealed that the accused were running the racket for the past one year with the nexus of representatives from many mobile service companies, including Idea and Airtel.

Using one genuine document of a customer who had gone to get a SIM, the accused would activate at least 10 SIM cards. The accused have activated thousands of SIMs and sold them to people, endangering national security, the police said.

The police have sealed the shops and recovered over 2,300 SIM cards which were activated. The police have also recovered accessories worth over Rs 5 lakh.