Saturday, May 28 2005 18:24 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: With the arrest of a person, police today (May 28, 2005) busted a Rs 10 crore illegal telephone exchange racket and spread a dragnet for two others who are absconding.

Venkatesh Raman was allegedly running two illegal telephone exchanges under the garb of "Allied Travel Agency" in Dadar and Sion, Central Mumbai.

Various types of equipment such as modem, routers, phones and SIM cards, worth Rs 21 lakhs have been seized from Raman, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Dhananjay Kamlakar, said.

According to Kamlakar, the kingpin of the racket, Tomar, was in USA but the police was unable to find any further clues about him so far.

Raman was arrested today but his two associates have gone underground, he said.

The accused used to buy leased Internet line and use them for bypassing authorised bodies such as VSNL (Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd) and BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd) who were supposed to receive international calls. In this way, the international callers did not pay the access charges thereby resulting in heavy losses to the Government.

The accused disclosed that Tomar used to make several international calls illegally and did not excess charges.

The Government had suffered a loss of Rs ten crore in the last two years, DCP Kamlakar said.