Kozhikode: The Kerala Police on Monday launched a major crackdown on parallel telephone exchanges which pose a serious threat to national security.
The police have already busted six such telephone exchanges in Ernakulam and Thrissur districts.
The raids were carried out based on the information received during the interrogation of Ibrahim Pullottil, the prime accused arrested from Bangalore.
Ibrahim, a native of Kadampuzha in Malappuram district, had reportedly confessed to the police that he had supplied around 100 telephone exchange units in Kerala.
The police are now on the lookout for Salim, hailing from Malappuram, who is said to be overseeing the functioning of parallel telephone exchanges in the State.
Three held in Koratty
Salim's accomplices, Hakim, 32, hailing from Ernakulam; Nithin, 32, of Angamaly; and Rishad, 28, belonging to Mancherry, were arrested by the Ernakulam Rural Police for running a telephone exchange at Koratty in Thrissur district.
They were running the exchange under the cover of an electrical repair shop, named Phoenix, at Koratty Junction on the National Highway.
The police seized 14 gadgets with VoIP GSM Gateway technology from the house of Hakim. This technology enables direct routing between IP, digital, analogue and GSM networks. Such gadgets are used to convert international calls into local calls.
(VoIP is Voice over Internet Protocol.)
The racket used to convert more than 100 calls at a time using gateway gadgets that house around 16 to 22 SIM cards.
About 100 SIM cards and 11 WiFi routers and its allied gadgets were also seized from them.
The seized computers and the DVR of the CCTV camera were sent to the cyberwing of the police for detailed examination.
The Central Intelligence Bureau and the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) sleuths have already questioned the accused.
Meanwhile, the police probe led by Ernakulam Rural SP, G.Poonguzhali, has also found out that they ran similar types of operations in Aluva, Pathalam, Angamaly, Muvattupuzha, Kalamassery and Perumbavoor.
Vast network
It was on June 9 that nine exchanges, which were run by Ibrahim Pullottil in Bangalore, were busted. Later, seven such exchanges, purportedly used for running anti-national activities, were unearthed by the police in Kozhikode.
While making a probe on why parallel telephone exchanges are in demand at a time when free video calls are available through various Apps, the police have stumbled upon the fact that it is being mainly used to support the smooth running of illicit drug, gold and hawala mafia.
The attraction of parallel exchange is that none will be able to trace the phone call details.
It is also learnt that a section of the gold mafia working in Kerala has invested hugely in these exchanges.
The functioning of such units were detected in Kerala, Karnataka, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in the last two months.
No trace of calls
Hawala phone calls are illegal phone calls that are made to India from overseas, by leaving not even a slightest trace.
The modus operandi is very interesting. By bypassing India's official International Long Distance (ILD) gateway, overseas calls are received first using the VoIP technology. Then it is converted into India's usual mobile call using Chinese gadgets.
Since it does not pass through the official gateway, such phone calls will not be recorded anywhere, making it the most sought after thing among all mafia hues.
The gadgets which are able to operate 32 to 128 SIM cards at a time are used for this purpose.
