SIM Box Racket: NIA Team Arrive In Bhubaneswar, To Interrogate Main Accused Raju Mandal

Bhubaneswar, Aug 21: A team of National Investigation Agency (NIA) have arrived at the Capital City Wednesday afternoon to investigate the SIM Box racket and to decode the international links.

The NIA team will reportedly interrogate the racket's main accused Raju Mandal in an attempt to find out more links in the case.

The Twin-City (Bhubaneswar & Cuttack) Commissionerate Police, on the other hand, continues its investigation after tracing the links in Ranchi, Jharkhand.

Reportedly, Raju has continuously been interrogated by the Commissionerate Police. To find out more information, police has conducted a marathon interrogation of Raju's maternal uncle. During the interrogation, police has reportedly tried to find out whether the family was aware of his activities as well as his travel details.

The Commissionerate Police is on its way to Bhubaneswar after conducting a long six-hour raid in Ranchi. Police has recovered five SIM Boxes from Ranchi.

The SIM Boxes had been installed at Hazi Sohail Mallik's house in Lane 15, Maulana Azad Colony under Namkum Police Station limits in Ranchi.

Other than five active SIM Boxes, police has recovered 219 active sim cards, 40 unused sim cards, an inverter battery, a modem, a couple of routers and a smart switch.

Besides the Twin-City Commissionerate Police special squad, the search operation saw the involvement of a team of Jharkhand Police, which includes officers from the cyber cell, crime branch and special branch.

Reportedly, the Jharkhand Police have also interrogated the main accused Raju Mandal. Following the interrogation, it was revealed that Raju had got the house six months ago on rent (Rs 7,500 per month) and set up the SIM Boxes.

He used to come once in a week for maintainance of the SIM Boxes and used to change unused sim cards for safety.

It has also been revealed that Asadur Zaman, the handler, had brought the SIM Boxes to West Bengal from Bangladesh and gave it to Raju, who carried those in train to Ranchi. With the instruction from Asadur, Raju installed the SIM Boxes at the said location in Ranchi.

Raju was getting the money from Asadur through 'Hawala'. All the sim cards are reportedly pre-activated Airtel sims. Raju was getting those sim cards using code words.