Five-member gang held for SIM card fraud in Hyderabad

The police asked the people to verify with SIM card providers about the total SIM cards obtained by submitting their Aadhar cards if they get any suspicion.

Hyderabad: A five member gang, allegedly involved in supplying SIM cards to cyber fraudsters after obtaining them fraudulently by submitting documents of common people, was arrested by the Hyderabad police on Thursday. The police seized around 1750 pre-activated SIM cards from them.

Acting on a tip off, the Hyderabad Commissioner’s Task Force (East) team along with Abid Road police caught Sura Venkatesh, N Imam Saddam Hussain, Danam Vijay Kumar, G Govardhan and Balakrishnan Manikanda.

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According to the police, Venkatesh was purchasing the SIM cards from Hussain for a price of Rs. 400 each and supplying to Vijay Kumar and the latter sold it to Manikanda for Rs. 800 each. Manikanda supplied it to Cambodia based fraudsters at high price.

“Hussain runs a mobile phone shop in Kadapa in AP. He collected the documents from customers for providing SIM cards. While, he handed over one SIM card to the customer, he obtained one more SIM by submitting the same document and sold to Manikanda,” said Y V S Sudheendra, DCP Task Force.

The police asked the people to verify with SIM card providers about the total SIM cards obtained by submitting their Aadhar cards if they get any suspicion.