Members of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) arrested a man along with huge illegal mobile SIM cards and Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, an alternative to landline-based telephone systems, equipment during an overnight raid in the city's Badda area last night.
The arrested were identified as M Raju, 36, son of Yunus Ali Bhuiyan, hailing from Ramganj upazila in Lakhipur district.
"The RAB members arrested Raju from the Badda Thana area around 9pm on Wednesday while conducting a joint operation with the National Telecommunication Monitoring Centre (NTMC)," said Assistant Police Super and Assistant Director (OPS and Media) of RAB-1 M Mahfuzur Rahman.
The team also recovered 30 VoIP SIM boxes, 5,050 SIM cards, two power- cords, one router, one mouse, six pen- drives, six mobile phones, five laptops, five inter-switch boxes, one keyboard, one Flexiload SIM, and a huge amount of VoIP equipment from his possession.
"It was evident through primary interrogation that the arrested person is a member of a group of illegal business circles, and they were involved in telecommunications business for a long without taking any licence from the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC)," said the RAB official.
The primary interrogation also revealed that this illegal business group was reportedly providing calling card, payment, and recharge services in different countries, including the Middle East, by installing servers in the country. They routed international calls, evaded huge government taxes, and earned crores of dollars through operating these illegal telecommunication services.
