ATS suspects role of telecom company staff in MP spy-racket

The Madhya Pradesh ATS said the accused in an alleged spy-racket run from Pakistan had built a hi-tech communication system in collusion with some staff of telecom companies to pass on strategic information to their overseas handlers.
Eleven people were arrested from different places in the state yesterday for being part of an alleged espionage racket being run from Pakistan to collect strategic information on important Indian establishments.
"Around 3,000 SIM cards, nearly 50 mobile phone instruments and many SIM boxes (an imported gadget or exchange system that holds multiple SIM cards) have been seized," an Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) official said.

"The overseas handlers used to connect to Madhya Pradesh from different international cities as calls from Pakistan are under strict surveillance in India," he said.
The overseas handlers primarily used voice over internet protocol (VOIP) to communicate with the accused to get information, the official said.
"The modus operandi was the handlers through internet calls would connect with the accused from some city abroad (except Pakistan) through the imported SIM boxes that were used and kept by the receivers in Madhya Pradesh. These boxes converted the internet call into GSM calls," he said.

Calls forwarded from the SIM boxes automatically erased the caller's identity from the display and showed the international calls as local, the official said.

In this parallel communication of the accused, some staffers of telecom companies too were involved, he said.
Meanwhile, all the accused have been sent to police
remand by a local court.
Balram from Satna district, Trilok Bhadoria, Ritesh Khullar, Jitendra Yadav, Jitendra Singh Thakur and Lashkar K Pandit from Gwalior, Manish Gandhi, Dhurv Saxena and Mohit Agrawal from Bhopal and Mohan Gupta and Sandeep Gupta from Jabalpur have been sent to police remand.
The court yesterday sent Balram to police custody for further quizzing till February 14 while five other accused from Gwalior were sent to police remand till February 12.

Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC) Satish Chandra Malviya today sent the three accused from Bhopal and two accused from Jabalpur to police remand till February 14 after the prosecutors informed the court that the police need time to interrogate them for anti-national activities.
The state police had zeroed in on the accused after the arrest of Satvinder Singh and Dadu along the R S Pura sector on the International Border in Jammu and Kashmir for sharing secret information of strategic establishments to their overseas handlers in November last year, MP ATS chief Sanjeev Shami had told reporters yesterday.
The two had reportedly revealed that they were gathering secret information regarding the locations of the Army and other security forces, and sharing the same with Pakistan on a social networking app.

Money was frequently deposited through 'hawala' transactions in the accounts of Balram with fictitious names by overseas handlers, Shami had said.
They were also involved in lottery frauds, he had added.
Shami couldn't be contacted after repeated calls today as he remained huddled in meeting and overseeing the quizzing of the accused.