5 held for SIM registration with fake info
STAFF REPORTER
Five sales agents of mobile SIM cards have been arrested from Gulshan area of the capital in possession of a huge number of SIMs registered with fake biometric details, police said yesterday.
The five agents were arrested on Tuesday with a huge amount of SIMs registered with fake biometric details. The matter is now under investigation, Mostaque Ahmed, deputy commissioner of Gulshan Zone of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, said.
The SIMs were registered without details of specific subscribers who were supposed to buy those, police said adding the agents collected SIMs of different mobile operators and registered those with biometric details of unspecified individuals on random basis.
Although the governments deadline for free biometric SIM registration ended on May 31, the telecom operators are allegedly running free biometric registration violating the government instruction, police said.
State Minister for Posts and Telecommunications Tarana Halim said her ministry would hold a meeting with the high officials of the telecom operators today to discuss biometric registration of SIMs and RIUMs.
The operators will be instructed not to register any SIM with false documents, she told The Independent.
We have 110 million legal mobile subscribers, who have legally completed their biometric registration. But, we came to know from the media that some operators are still running biometric SIM registration process violating the government instruction. We will ask the operators to address the issue, she added.
We cannot let our initiative of biometric SIM registration go down the drain. We will take legal action against the high officials of the telecom operators, if needed, the state minister stated.
Biometric registration of new SIMs and re-registration of the old ones were made mandatory from December 16 last year. The registration continued until May 31.
