Bhubaneswar, Jan 25 (IANS): With the arrest of four persons, the Keonjhar district police of Odisha claimed to have busted a fake sim card racket.

All the accused persons arrested on Wednesday belonged to different places in Ghasipura and Ramchandrapur areas of the Keonjhar district.

The police seized 538 SIM cards, 18 mobile phones, five biometric scanners, bank passbooks, ATM cards, identity cards and other incriminating materials from their possession.

The Keonjhar Police ascertained during a probe that the miscreants were posing as POS (Point of Sale) agents of Airtel and Jio and activating multiple SIM cards in the names of people of Keonjhar district. Later, they sold these fake sim cards to cyber fraudsters across the country.

“We received a requisition from Maharashtra Police regarding the involvement of a SIM card from Ghasipura in a cyber crime case there. Based on the information, a case was registered at the Cyber Crime and Economic Offences police station following further investigation in the case. During investigation, we found that they have sold around 4000 SIM cards to cyber criminals in Rajasthan, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Bihar. They used to charge Rs 500 to Rs 1000 per SIM Card,” said Kusalkar Nitin Dagudu, SP Keonjhar district.

He further said that police have so far found records of more than 300 FIRs registered in different areas across the country where the cyber criminals duped several gullible victims of their hard-earned money using the SIM cards supplied by the arrested accused from Ghasipura.

“In one such FIR, a victim in Maharashtra was duped by callers claiming to be from a reputed bank promising interest-free loan. In another case, a victim from Telangana was duped by callers claiming to be from an electric bike company offering e-bike at a discount,” said police sources.