Crackdown on cybercrime in 40 Nuh villages, 983 SIMs disabled

Tribune News Service

Sumedha Sharma

Gurugram, October 26

As Nuh emerges as the biggest cybercrime hub of the NCR, the district police have launched a massive crackdown on 40 villages identified as Jamtaras of Haryana. ‘Jamtara’ is a TV series in which a bunch of small-town young guns operate a phishing racket.

Following an exhaustive exercise of analysing mobile tower dump, the police have identified 10,000 suspicious mobile numbers active around these villages and in the forests of the Aravallis.

The numbers have been forwarded to the Crime Investigation Department (CID) that is reviewing those. Over the past week, it has identified 1,500 fake ones and deactivated 983.

“It is the first exercise in the NCR where we are reviewing numbers at such a large scale and deactivating those. Each fraud subscriber identity module (SIM) costs over Rs 3,000 to criminals and cancelling the SIM will be a major jolt to them. The CID has, so far, identified 1,500 as fraudulent and we expect more updates soon,” SP Varun Singla told The Tribune. The district has received 450 complaints related to cybercrime so far this year.

Nai is the most notorious village in the list followed by Tirwara, Bicchor, Singar, Jaimat, Gangadbas, Piproli, Khedla, Lohingakalan, Jakhopur, Aminabad, Bisru, Dudholi and Tuseni.

Residents are allegedly known to be involved in phishing, Olx frauds, honey-trapping, account hacking, social media hacking, online cards cloning, digital lockers hacking and tampering with ID cards. Each household in these villages is allegedly actively involved in cybercrime. The men and boys source fake SIMs from Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan etc.

Being in the foothills, these villages serve as perfect spots for fraudulent calling as the locations are highly untraceable in the Aravallis and nearby fields. The village elders rent out their fields for calling purposes.

The women aid in honey-trapping. The residents are wanted for cyber crimes across the country and are known to even take contracts of fraudulent calling on behalf of bigger gangs operating outside NCR.

The SIM deactivation exercise has led to panic in the villages as Muqbil (name changed), who is wanted in a dozen cases in Delhi, says, “I had two SIMs which I had got from Alwar for Rs 3,000 each. These SIMs had masked locations which ensured I was never caught. Those have been blocked and now, new SIMs are priced at Rs 5,000 each. I have a family of 10 to feed and need to marry two sisters in December.”

The police says that not only numbers are being blocked, but they are also reaching out to other states’ police across the country to trace victims.

“We are reviewing the bank details of all accused caught for cyber crime here and tracing the accounts from where they got the money. We are then getting victims details from the national cyber crime reporting portal and getting the victims to file complaints to ensure conviction,” added Singla.

Entire households involved in phishing

• In Haryana’s Jamtara, entire households actively involved in phishing racket
• Police identify 10,000 suspicious mobile numbers across 40 villages in Nuh district
• Locals indulge in Olx frauds, honey-trapping, account hacking and card cloning
• Being in Aravallis’ foothills, call location in these villages remains untraceable
• In some cases, village elders have rented out fields for making calls

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