Gurugram: Call centre sealed for setting up illegal telecom exchange

Gurugram, July 18

The Gurugram police have sealed a call centre and booked its owner under the Telegraph Act. An illegal telecom exchange was setup at the call centre and they were converting international long distance (ILD) incoming calls into local/STD calls without a licence from the Department of Telecom (DOT). The fact came to the fore when a team of the Mumbai police probing a call from Kuwait reached Gurugram. An FIR has been registered at the Sector 50 police station.

According to a complaint filed by Anil Sharma, assistant nodal officer of Tata Teleservices limited, Delhi circle, Dhaval Pradeep Jobalia was carrying out an illegal business through his call centre M/s Universal Craft Collection, located at Spaze I-tech Park, Sohna Road, Sector 49.

“They have setup an illegal telecom exchange and were converting the ILD incoming calls into local/STD calls without licence from DoT. Due to this, the Department Of Telecommunication has suffered huge financial loses” read the complaint.

The complainant Anil Sharma added that three calls were made on July 7 at the call centre on a landline number from Kuwait. All these calls were from outside the country but the displayed command-line interface (CLI) was local. This means that the international calls were being illegally routed by the call centre.

Sources said these were threat calls made from Kuwait and transfer from the above call centre to Mumbai. After the Mumbai police contacted the local police, a special search was conducted at the call centre by a team led by Prince Kumar, Assistant Director of DOT, Delhi, Inspector Rajesh Kumar, SHO of the Sector 50 police station. The team seized some gazette, equipment and sealed the call centre.

Following the complaint, an FIR has been registered against call centre owner Dhaval Pradeep Jobalia under Sections 4, 20, 21 and 25 of the Telegraph Act 1885 and Sections 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC at the Sector 50 police station.

The complainant told the police that the accused through his call centre was a possible threat to national security as all calls passed through this unauthorised exchange which was not monitored by law enforcement agencies. “Only ILD licences are authorised to carry international telephone calls coming into India or going out of the country and all these call must be routed through a gateway provided by the ILD licences. No private basic service provider or subscriber can route incoming international calls other than through the network of the ILD licence”, he added.

“An FIR has been registered and we are investigating the matter and verifying facts. Action will be taken as per the law”, said Yashwant Yadav, ACP, Sadar.