Tea vendor made sim dealer to obtain more in Gujarat

VADODARA: A plethora of cases of sim cards, Aadhar cards and PAN cards being obtained fraudulently or by cheating some gullible person has come to light. But in Richhwani village of Panchmahal district, it transpired that an agency selling sim cards was itself fraudulently set up and cards were obtained using its credentials.
The Special Operations Group (SOG) of Panchmahal police started investigations and arrested a man for activating 142 sim cards fraudulently using the photographs of merely two persons. He used Aadhaar card copies of different persons to activate these cards.
SOG swung into action after receiving information from the state Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS). As many as 39 out of the 142 sim cards were activated in the names of persons from Panchmahal district.
SOG sleuths arrested Munavvar Patel who said that he had activated the cards using dubious documents to meet the targets of retailers in 2019 and 2020. Four retailers corroborated the claim. But the most amusing case was of a tea vendor who had his shop near Munnavar’s shop in Richhwani.
While other agents confirmed that they were retailers working under Munavvar, Balwant Baria who was shown as the owner of Mahesh Mobile was surprised.
He said that he was not involved in the business of selling sim cards. He only had a tea shop near Munavvar’s shop. It came to light that five sim cards were obtained in his name including one for Mahesh Mobile.
Panchmahal SOG police inspector R A Patel said that demo sim cards for the retailers provided by telecom company were found in Munavvar’s possession. These included the one issued to the tea vendor.
When SOG officials started investigations, two men whose photographs were used were caught unaware of their pictures being used to obtain sim cards. They also told the police that the Aadhaar cards used to obtain sim cards were not theirs. Five persons whose Aadhaar cards were used for getting new connections told the police that while the Aadhaar cards were theirs, the pictures were not and they did not procure the sim cards.
Patel said that they were now trying to ascertain who had used these sim cards. “The cards were issued several years ago. Most of them are not in use now and it is difficult to ascertain who used them in the past. We are investigating those sim cards which are still active. Also, attempts were being made to identify the users of now unused cards using IMEI number of phones they were used in,” added Patel.