Saturday, 11 November 2023 | PNS | DEHRADUN
Uttarakhand Special Task Force (STF) arrested a man and a woman on charges of sending hundreds of SIM cards to several countries allegedly used to commit cyber fraud in India. The authorities have identified the man as Tenzing Chophel (28) who has claimed to be a Tibetan citizen. He has been living in the country since 2000 and is a BTech dropout. The woman has been identified as Lalita Thapa (29), a Bhutanese resident who is a postgraduate in commerce, said the senior superintendent of police of STF Ayush Agrawal. He said that both accused have sent at least 500 SIM cards to countries like Vietnam, Hong Kong and China which are allegedly used by cyber criminals there in committing cyber frauds and other associated offences in India. He said that these SIM cards are pre-activated in India and then used to run social media platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram to scam Indians. These SIM cards are also used to open several bank accounts with fake IDs to carry out transactions with victims. He said, “We came to know about this crime while investigating complaints of financial fraud in which victims were duped of lakhs of rupees in the name of providing work from home jobs like increasing ‘likes’ to the YouTube videos and subscribing to the channels. People are being duped using this scam on a large scale. Most of the cyber criminals involved in it live outside the country and use such SIMs to commit such frauds, as per our investigation. This is also a matter of national security as Indian SIM cards are being sent outside to criminals to commit crimes.” SSP said that names of SIM card sellers have also come to light and the STF will take action against them as well. He said that both accused have received education in India and claimed that they started this illegal work after the Covid-19 pandemic. The man claims to be a Tibetan but STF suspect him to be a Chinese criminal, as per Agrawal. The teams are investigating the case and will make more arrests soon on the basis of evidence gathered so far, he added.
