Prayagraj (Uttar Pradesh), Oct 1 (IANS) Five members of a gang that sold SIM cards to cyber fraudsters and criminals, have been arrested by a joint team of Army Intelligence (Lucknow), Special Operations Group (Narcotics) and Kareli police.
The members were arrested on Thursday while selling SIMs to criminals near Lal Colony in the city.
The police have seized around 1,000 SIMs and forged documents from their possession.
The arrested persons have been identified as Abdul Khalid, Shriram Chaurasia, Zishan Ahmad, Vikas Kesarwani and Krishna Kumar.
Inspector (Kareli) Anupam Sharma said the arrested persons had sold SIM cards to law-breakers at high prices after creating fake IDs.
"The miscreants are experts in generating fake IDs with a mobile app and selling SIMs to cyber criminals and others. They sold at least two SIM cards on a single ID. After selling a SIM to a customer with his original ID and activating it, they used to call the same customer pretending that their ID, which they had submitted for SIM, had gone missing and sought another ID for activation of the SIM card," he said explaining their modus operandi.
The gang was also expert in generating fake IDs to sell SIM cards of a prominent cellular provider company. They were supplying fake activated SIMs to cyber criminals and a city-based call centre.
The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Friday condemned the Congress government in Punjab for allegedly discriminating against teachers and forcing them to come to the streets, and asked state Education Minister Vijay Inder Singla not to behave in an 'arrogant' and 'dictatorial' manner and resolve the grievances of government school teachers immediately.
Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Badal on Thursday demanded a high court monitored probe into the manner in which the Congress government in Punjab was playing with the people's lives by creating an artificial shortage of vaccines by selling vaccine doses at a hefty profit to private hospitals.
The electronic conversation took place as US President Joe Biden announced on Thursday that India will receive Covid vaccines directly from the US stockpile, the White House said.
The Chief of Army Staff (COAS), General M.M. Naravane, reached Kashmir on Wednesday on a two-day visit to review the prevailing security situation in the Union Territory (UT), the army said in a statement.
"There have been several unfounded media reports that have peddled misinformation among the masses regarding this exercise of national importance," a ministry statement said, adding that the total number of Covid vaccine doses administered in the country so far stand at 21,85,46,667.
The Congress said that it was "appropriate for our initial statement to note that the intrusion by Israeli forces into the Holy Al Aqsa mosque during Ramzan prayers had ruptured the delicate peace in the region".
