Mumbai: The Mumbai Police has busted a racket involving an illegal Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) exchange in suburban Govandi here and arrested one person in this connection, an official said on Saturday.

Based on a specific tip-off received by the military intelligence, the Mumbai crime branch and Jammu Kashmir Police jointly conducted a raid on the exchange, the official said.

“Through the exchange, calls were being to various defence establishments in Kashmir. One person was arrested in this connection and over 190 SIM cards have been recovered,” he said.

He said calls from abroad were being converted into regular mobile calls by using SIMBOX technology, with mobile numbers being activated in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand showing the tower location of Govandi.

“After analysing call details records (CDR) of a specific number, it came to light number of calls was higher than regular calls and IMEI numbers were changing regularly,” said Akbar Pathan, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Detection- 1).

Accordingly, Crime Branch Units VI and XI personnel, technical officers and mobile phone service company staff conducted a raid at Natwar Parekh Compound in Govandi and busted the illegal exchange which was converting VOIP calls made from abroad into local voice calls, he said.

“As a local number used to get displayed on receiver’s mobile phone, he used to assume the caller is based within the country. This illegal VOIP call exchange was creating serious security concerns, as security agencies were not being able to intercept them,” the official informed.

He identified the man arrested as Govandi resident Sameer Kadar Alwari (38) who has confessed that several such calls were made to sensitive installations in J-K.

He was arrested earlier by Thane police in a similar case.

“We have seized five SIMBOX equipment, including four that were activated, 223 SIM cards, laptop, two routers, 10 mobiles phones in the raid,” he added.

Police are verifying, whether the calls, which were made through the parallel SIMBOX technology has any link to a car found in Jammu two days ago, he said.