In Meghalaya, police find SIM cards used by militants equally dangerous as firearms

It is not just proliferation of illegal arms and ammunition, but also unauthorized SIM cards of various mobile phone service providers that have become a major headache for the police in Meghalaya fighting militant groups and gangs of criminals.

“All the militant groups, criminals, extortionists and kidnap gangs operating in Meghalaya in general and the Garo Hills region in particular, are using mobile SIM cards of various service providers which are pre-activated on fictitious names from Dimapur, Agartala, Imphal and Assam,” said IGP (HQ) GHP Raju, informing that the state DGP has ordered an intensive drive against sellers of such SIM cards in the state.

Meghalaya Director-General of Police Rajiv Mehta in fact has described it as “mobile menace” with militants and criminal gangs alike using such pre-activated SIM cards to create immense fear psychosis in the minds of the law abiding citizens through extortion SMSs, intimidation, etc.

On Wednesday as he toured the Garo Hills region, DGP Mehta asked SPs in all districts to conduct a special and intensive drive and raid shops that sell such SIM cards activated from Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, and Tripura. He also asked them to take up cases against the sellers under appropriate sections of Information Technology Act and other provisions of law.

IGP Raju said militant groups like the GNLA, AMEF, ASAK, LAEF, UALA and others procure these pre-activated SIM cards through their channels and extensively use them to send extortion messages to different people. Six mobile service provider companies – Aircel, Airtel, BSNL, Idea, Reliance and Vodafone – that operate in Meghalaya are under the police scanner now.

“In the past, many prominent political leaders, government servants and businessmen received threats and extortion SMS from GNLA and other militant groups using these SIM cards. When police verified the Subscriber Detail Records (SDR) of these SIM cards, all the addresses of these SIM cards were either from Dimapur or Imphal. When the matter was taken up with Dimapur Police and Imphal Police, they expressed their inability to locate addresses of the subscriber of these SIM cards as all those addresses given and photos provided were fictitious and false,” IGP Raju said.

Meghalaya Police have already seized over 600 such pre-activated SIM cards from the Garo Hills region, and registered cases against the sellers. Of the 600 SIM cards seized, 72 were Airtel, 59 Aircel, 97 Reliance, 155 Vodafone and 33 IDEA SIM cards, the IGP informed.

As per the statements of the sellers, each SIM card was sold at Rs 200 to Rs 300 as there was no need to produce any address and/or identity proof of the user. “Militants have been buying these SIM cards in bulk and using them for committing extortion, criminal intimidation and evade police arrest by discarding these SIM cards after committing offences,” he said.

Source:: Indian Express