Bhubaneswar, Aug 23: Odisha Police has taken Raju Mandal, chief techie of the suspected SIM Box hub in Odisha on another 2-day remand on Friday.
Mandal had allegedly procured the devices and fake SIM cards from one Asadur and then installed them in three rented houses in Cuttack, Bhubaneswar and Ranchi.
So far, as many as total of 12 SIM boxes, 481 SIM cards, an extra 810 stand-by SIM cards were seized during the raids in both Cuttack and Bhubaneswar and another five SIM boxes from Ranchi, said commissionerate of Police.
Earlier, a local court here had granted the Odisha Police five-day remand of Mandal. Odisha police had also sought assistance from the NIA and Interpol to probe any potential terrorist connections between Mandal and Asadur, who allegedly operated SIM box centres at Bhubaneswar and Ranchi from Dhaka with criminal intentions.
The SIM boxes were allegedly used to make international calls to countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Turkey, raising suspicions of terrorist involvement.
Bangladeshi national Asadur who was the handler of Mandal, a resident of West Bengal arrested on August 17 with over 1,000 pre-activated SIM cards along with routers and other equipment from a house in Bhubaneswar. On the next day, a huge cache of SIM Cards and a few active SIM Boxes were seized in Cuttack, from a closed residential building.
