In a major breakthrough, Assam police on Friday busted two illegal telephone exchanges operating from Haflong and Umrangsu in North Cachar Hills district of the state and caught 13 suspected Pakistani ISI agents involved in the illegal operation.
Two BSNL employees, who allegedly helped the suspected ISI agents to run these illegal exchanges were also arrested.
A police source informed that the arrests were made on a tip-off that some anti-social elements used these exchanges to divert calls originating from Dubai, Pakistan, UAE, Bangladesh and several other foreign countries to destinations in rest of the country.
Also some people from Mumbai and different parts of India first calls up these illegal telephone exchanges in N C Hills and then the suspected ISI agents manning these exchanges divert these calls to foreign destinations, dodging the surveillance blanket of Indian security and intelligence agencies who regularly monitor and record suspected calls to and from India in the wake of growing threats from anti-Indian forces that manifested in several serial blasts and militants attacks in the country in recent past.
Police informed that some 'international mafias' used to make threat call from Dubai and else where to Mumbai to extort money from vulnerable persons.
Arrested persons were identified as Abdul Kheiyee (Karimganj), Biju Yadav (Rajasthan), Lakshmi Narayan (Rajasthan), Rahim Uddin (Rajasthan), Mahabir Prasad Sarma (Rajasthan), Mohammad Islam (Rajasthan), Irfan Sayeed (Rajasthan), Abdul Salam (Karimganj), Jakir Hussain (Karimganj), Bajrang Singh (Rajasthan), Abdul Basir Talukdar (Badarpur), Mirajul Laskar (Chachar).
Arrested BSNL workers are Surya Aantuwai and Ram Biswas of Haflong Telephone exchange.
The gang used eight BSNL landline connections to facilitate conference calls through these illegal exchanges.
For this purpose they installed six connections at a rented house in Sarkari Bagan area of Haflong and Umrangshu towns with other modern gadgets. Police in Haflong informed that all the arrested persons would be produced before court on Saturday.
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