Police busts illegal SIM racket

Hyderabad: The Hyderabad Special Crime Team, along with the Nampally police, busted an illegally activated SIM card racket and arrested two persons from Andhra Pradesh. Police seized 184 illegally activated SIM cards from their possession. The arrested persons were identified as Nanevath Dinesh Kumar Naik (22), a SIMs distributor and Parnapally Sai Pradeep (24) an Airtel SIMs promoter at Kadapa. Police seized 184 illegally activated SIM cards – Airtel (150) and Jio (34) and four mobile phones.

According to the police, the accused persons are running SIM distributor centre at Kadapa district, Andhra Pradesh, and illegally activating the new Airtel SIM cards in the names of the customers, who visit their store to purchase new Vodafone-Idea SIM cards, without informing the customers by misusing their KYC details, fingerprints.

“The persons came to Hyderabad to sell such illegally activated SIM cards to buyers at high prices,” said G Venkateswar Reddy, ACP, Special Crime Team, CCS. The arrested persons, along with the seized material, were handed over to the Nampally police for further investigation. Hyderabad police advised the citizens to be cautious while purchasing new SIM cards or updating their KYC details in authorised network stores and centres.