Get illegal SIMs for just Rs 10

KOLKATA: A SIM card issued in your name may be in the hands of a stranger, perhaps a criminal or even Maoist leader Kishanji. Goaded by cut-throat competition, a section of telecom service providers is encouraging distributors to sell preactivated SIM cards, despite a strict no-no by Trai, thereby allowing terrorists and criminals to exploit a security loophole.

SIMs activated on documents of bona fide customers, who have no clue about the racket, are being hawked for a mere Rs 10 on the streets of Bengal. On Sunday morning, 80 such preactivated GSM SIM cards were seized from a roadside stall in Serampore, Hooghly. TOI got five of them and even used one to prove it was preactivated.

The customers, in whose names the SIMs have been illegally activated, will not know about it until police knock on their door one day because the cellphone trail in a certain crime led to the address. Such preactivated SIMs were used by the 26/11 attackers and in last year’s Guwahati serial blasts. One SIM used by the 26/11 terrorists was issued in Kolkata aga-inst the papers of a dead man who never had a brush with even petty crime.

On Sunday, a group of local youths was seen openly selling SIMs near Serampore station. ‘They were practically hawking the cards, strewn on a small table, for Rs 10 each,” said a member of the All Bengal Tele Traders Welfare Association (ABTTWA).

Posing as customers, a group of local cellphone traders approached the youths. “They told us a similar SIM card would cost Rs 50 at a telecom shop. They kept enticing us that we could activate the SIMs right after purchasing,” said a forum member.