A court here today extended by four days the police remand of the kingpin of a spy racket recently busted in Madhya Pradesh after the prosecution informed his custody was required to gather evidence in the case.
Eleven people were arrested by the Madhya Pradesh Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) in connection with the racket allegedly being operated from Pakistan.
Judicial Magistrate Kamlesh Kumar sent Balram Singh from Satna district and three others -- Manish Gandhi, Dhurv Saxena and Mohit Agrawal -- from Bhopal to police custody after the prosecution informed the court that it was yet to recover documents in connection with the espionage.
The ATS informed the court that it was yet to recover evidence pertaining to their activities, seize diaries, details of bank accounts and ATM card from Balram used in the espionage.
The prosecution submitted that it was yet to track down the bank staffers and people who helped Balram to open accounts with forged papers given that the oversees handlers used to route money to the prime accused, who in turn used to distribute it to his accomplices for snooping important Indian establishments.
The ATS also informed that it was yet to recover forged documents from Manish using which he had bought the SIM cards for spying.
Similarly, the prosecution took Dhurv and Mohit in remand saying it has to recover imported SIM boxes used in the espionage.
However, two others Mohan Gupta and Sandeep Gupta from Jabalpur district involved in the racket were sent to judicial custody till February 27 by the court.
Earlier on February 12, Judicial Magistrate Shala Sirohi sent to jail Trilok Bhadoria, Ritesh Khullar, Jitendra Yadav, Jitendra Singh Thakur and Lashkar Pandit from Gwalior involved in spying, till February 27.
(Reopens LGB 4)
The ATS had arrested 11 people on February 9 from different parts of the state after Satvinder Singh and Dadu were nabbed along the R S Pura sector on the International Border in Jammu and Kashmir for sharing secret information of strategic establishments to their overseas handlers last November.
The two had reportedly revealed that they were gathering secret information regarding the locations of the Army and other security forces, and sharing these with Pakistan on a social networking app.
The accused had been charged with passing on crucial information of vital installations in Madhya Pradesh to their overseas handlers.
"Around 3,000 SIM cards, nearly 50 mobile phone instruments and many SIM boxes (an imported gadget or exchange system that holds multiple SIM cards) have been seized from the accused," an ATS official said.
"The overseas handlers used to connect to Madhya Pradesh from different international cities as calls from Pakistan are under strict surveillance in India," according to the officer.
The overseas handlers primarily used Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to communicate with the accused to get information, the official said.
"The modus operandi of the racket communication was that the handlers through Internet calls would connect with the accused from some city abroad (except Pakistan) through the imported SIM boxes that were used and kept by the receivers in Madhya Pradesh. These boxes converted the Internet call into GSM calls," he said.
Calls forwarded from the SIM boxes automatically erased the caller's identity from the display and showed the international calls as local, the official said.
In this parallel communication of the accused, some staffers of telecom companies too were involved, he said.
