Illegal telephone exchange busted in Ahmedabad

The Gujarat ATS on Saturday night busted an illegal telephone exchange operating from a commercial complex on SG Road in the Bodakdev area of the city.

According to an FIR filed with DCB (Detection of Crime Branch), a sub-inspector with the anti-terrorism squad raided an office in Shapath-2 commercial centre on SG Road following an input that an illegal telephone exchange is being run from there.

The input from the department of telecommunication said that the accused have illegally been providing the service of converting VOIP (voice over internet protocol) calls to the GSM (global system for mobile communication) calls for Saudi Arabia where internet calling are regulated.

The cops then raided the office and found three persons Jay Shah, 32, a resident of Satellite; Hardik Parmar, 25, a resident of New Ranip; and Anwar Abdul Jabbar Sharif , 35, a native of Chennai in Tamil Nadu working there.

The cops said that Shah and Parmar were deployed for technical support and were not aware of the illegal activities. The digital telephone exchange was operated by Sharif who was working for two other accused Shiva Kumar and James Martyn. Using an SIP (session initiating protocol) line, Sharif and two others were providing this illegal service to the people in Saudi Arabia.

The accused had taken 150 SIP lines, using which they used to convert international calls made through internet to local calls. The exchange was being run in pretext of a customer care for a gold firm.

Sharif was arrested and charged for cheating and criminal conspiracy. Kumar and Martyn are on the run.