Mumbai: The mastermind of the insurance policy racket, which was busted last week, had established a system where certain cell phones were used only for calling victims and no internet-based apps were installed on these phones. According to the police, this was done deliberately, as tracking a cell phone’s location becomes harder in the absence of Internet.
The lid was blown off the racket on Thursday with the arrest of eight people at a call centre in Noida. They would call up people and offer to sell them insurance policies with high returns, conning them into paying lakhs of rupees.
Crime Branch sources said, the mastermind, identified as Kaptan Singh Chauhan, had worked with insurance agencies.
An officer, who is part of the investigation, said, “Whenever Chauhan called up the complainant, a Malad resident who lost over ₹22 lakh, he always used the same cell phone. This phone was only used for calling, and that too for calling the victim, limiting its activity to one call every few days.”
“Chauhan had passed strict instructions to all his accomplices that phones used for calling victims were not to be used for any other purpose,” said the officer.
The eight accused are in the Crime Branch custody till Thursday and are being interrogated to find out how many people have been conned by them. Prima facie, the police suspect that the racket was in operation for at least seven to eight months.
Another officer said, “We have identified some more suspects involved in the racket, and are working on apprehending them.”
Apps like WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter keep exchanging data with their servers, putting the phone in constant touch with cellular towers, and hence enabling law enforcement agencies to chart the user’s movements. In the absence of any internet-based activity, the cell phone is in contact with a tower only when a call is made, and this is the only time that the phone can be tracked.