International call routing racket busted in Hyderabad, 5 held

Hyderabad: 5-member international call racket gang was busted by Hyderabad police. The accused were held for using Voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) routing the calls through Internet, thus violating Indian Telegraph Act of 1885. The accused terminate the incoming international VoIP calls into PSTN mode by using Indian local telephone numbers which is prohibitted by Department of Telecommunications, Government of India.

Ghulam Khwaja Khan (34) the kingpin was earlier booked in 2014 for the same offence. He procured 853 SIM cards of various telecom service providers through sales representatives. He had also purchased software and devices needed to route calls with the cost of Rs 1,50,000.

Setting up an office at Maisram Lane, Barkas, Chandrayangutta, in September 2016 Khwaja Khan began his operations. The co-accused who work in various telecom regulators used their sources to obtain Aadhaar documents and fabricate IDs needed to get SIM cards.

The gang was able to generate Rs 90,000 to Rs 1,20,000 per month through these calls. The gang also closed CDMA mobile phone SIM cards that led to customers getting billed for the international calls and also closed debit and credit cards to pay the bills for the SIM cards obtained through fraudulent means.

The gang had established an illegal exchange which interfaces Internet generated VoIP calls to PSTN network.

According to the investigators, the Internet bandwidth is misused for receiving incoming International VoIP (Voice over internet Protocol) calls. These calls terminate with PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) i.e. normal telephone network using mobile telephones and VoIP Gateways. Through Internet, illegal incoming international VoIP calls were pumped into India from foreign countries using VoIP technology.
The VoIP gateway converts VoIP calls, which were in the data form, into voice form and also retrieves the number dialed by the caller at the other end in a foreign country and dials that destination’s number using one of the available telephones connected to the VoIP gateway. The CLI (Calling Line Identification) on the receiver’s phone displays one of these telephone phone numbers whereas the caller (or call) is from outside the India.