Indian Kanoon - Search engine for Indian Law

(i) r/w 66, 66F (1)(B) of the Information Technology Act, 2000.

4. The prosecution case in all cases is identical. It is alleged that the applicant with criminal intention conspired with other accused persons viz., Juraiz, Shabeer, Krishnaprasad, Ibrahim Pullattil and Abdul Gafoor, had conducted illegal fraudulent activities to acquire unlawful gain by installing parallel BA No.521/2023 and conn.cases illegal telephone exchanges at different locations at Kozhikode and converted international phone calls and other phone calls by terminating those calls and bypassed them to local calls, with the help of illegal call routing Gateway devices, by inserting pre- activated SIM cards without the knowledge or consent of the SIM owners whereby they cheated various telecom service providers in India, had accessed, tampered, altered and diminished the value of the telecommunication network, sneaked into the communication system of the country, breached the internal security and sovereignty of the nation, threatened the privacy of the citizen and threatened the country's internal security and economic stability causing huge amount of monetary loss to the Government of India and thereby committed the offences.

8. The case records show that the accused installed six parallel illegal telephone exchanges at different locations in Kozhikode. It has come out during the investigation that the applicant has an active role related to the installation and functioning of illegal exchanges. He supplied cloud servers to the other accused to install the illegal exchange. During the investigation, a diary seized from the office of the firm 'Links IT Solutions', owned by the accused No.2, showed the applicant's name and an IP number adjacent to his name. The said IP number was also detected from the SIM boxes by the CDAC officials while examination. The origin of this IP number was investigated, and it was revealed that an Aurangabad-based firm M/s Intellectica Systems Pvt. Ltd., who used to rent virtual and dedicated servers for clients, had given a server in the aforesaid IP number to the BA No.521/2023 and conn.cases applicant. Subsequently, a notice under section 91 of Cr. P.C. was served to the company, and it was revealed that they had given several server spaces to the applicant on a rental basis. The servers were actively found to be maintained by the applicant by giving monthly rent. The virtual servers managed by the applicant and used for the functioning of the illegal exchanges were detected, seized, and extracted during the investigation. The applicant's Pay Pal payment wallet account was also seized, which showed that he had done a huge transaction of Rs.38,56,818.12 in recent years as the rent of the servers he maintained. The investigating agency requested the department of telecom to inspect the seized articles. After inspection, the telecom authority issued certificates clarifying that using this type of equipment in this manner bypasses the licensed International Long Distance Operator (for short, 'ILDO') Gateways and is illegal. Further, it was clarified that this set-up caused a loss of revenue to the licensed ILDO, and the Government of India has also lost a one-time entry fee of Rs.2.5 crores towards the ILDO license in each case. It was also asserted that this set-up poses a security threat to the nation as the calls switched BA No.521/2023 and conn.cases through this set-up cannot be traced and are beyond the scope of lawful interception.

10. No doubt, the investigation conducted so far reveals that the applicant and the remaining accused had violated the nation's existing law by permitting communication through their illegal parallel telephone exchanges. The SIM cards used in the SIM boxes by the accused in these parallel installations were procured from different States. It is revealed from the investigation that fake documents were provided to the service providers to acquire the same. Those SIM cards were obtained without the knowledge or consent of the SIM owners. By BA No.521/2023 and conn.cases operating the parallel telephone exchange using GSM Gateway devices, soft switches, preactivated SIM cards etc., the accused obtained access to call data records of the clients, which is restricted data for the security and privacy of the citizens. Access to call data records of the subscribers by the accused is against the public interest and public safety. Such CDRs were found in huge volumes in the applicant's data server. Vast volumes of CDRs were found in the server and call routes maintained by the applicant. According to the investigating agency, by lending these call routes, the applicant allowed China Skyline company to access Indian Telecommunication beyond the scope of interception, which is against the interest of national security. An illegal exchange functions by pushing communication to the country, bypassing the highly secured International Long- Distance Gateways without being noticed by the security system of our country.