Bhadrak, Dec 9: Bhadrak police on Friday busted an illegal SIM card trading racket and arrested a person in this connection.
A huge cache of pre-activated SIM cards has been recovered from the accused.
The accused has been identified as Bidyadhara Sahu from Bhagapur under Basudevpur police limits,who was a vendor of SIM cards authorized to supply among retailers.
Sources said, the Ministry of Telecommunications, expressing concern about a duplicate SIM card activation racket in Odisha, wrote a letter to the Bhadrak SP through the CID (Crime Branch).
Based on the intelligence inputs, Bhadrak police later launched an investigation and nabbed the accused before producing him before the court.
Bhadrak Sub Divisional Pilice Officer (SDPO) Sourav Otta said, “Sahu distributed SIM cards to retail outlets. The whole-sellers have targets from the service providers. When the retailers fail to achieve the target for him, the accused used to activate SIM cards with multiple uses of biometrics of one customer.”
During investigation, it was revealed that vendor Sahu was activating SIM cards by using the same ID proof and biometrics of customers multiple times to boost his sales.
