Hyd: international call routing racket busted, 3 arrested

The city police today claimed to have busted an international call routing racket with the arrest of three persons.

In call routing, incoming calls are received in the form of data through the Internet, and are converted back into voice call through VOIP gateways switch. The process bypasses authorised government telecom gateways, leading to revenue loss as well as posing threat to security, according to the police.

Acting on a tip-off, a team of Central Crime Station raided a house in Yakuthpura area and arrested Mohd Abdul Basheer.

He was in the business of call-routing for the past six months, a police release said.

Bashir channelised calls from Dubai and middle east countries through his illegal gateway setup.

Police also arrested Mohd Sarfaraz, who had an unauthorised VOIP exchange at his house.

They also seized seven single/multiple access SIM routers (gateways), wi-fi routers, several antennas, patch panel, laptop, cellphones and 364 SIM cards.

Syed Irfan Kabir, the third arrested accused, sold SIM cards in bulk and also rented out SIM cards to the other two.

In a month, the accused routed about 4,000 to 5,000 minutes of calls, earning about Rs 1 lakh. They received commission through hawala from a company called ‘Talk Free’ and similar other firms and a man named Raju Nepali who was based in Qatar, the release said.