Lucknow Police's Crime Branch has busted an illegal telecom network used for 'digital arrest' cyber scams, seizing illegal SIM boxes and high-tech routing equipment in coordinated raids across the city under an operation named Digital Kavach, news agency ANI reported on Sunday.

Source: ANI via ApnaMa TV

According to police officials quoted by ANI, the raids were carried out at four locations in the city, including Sushant Golf City, Para, BBD and Chinhat. A case has been registered at the Cyber Police Station.

The detailed seizure list reported by ANI includes six illegal SIM boxes comprising 192 SIM slots, three VPN gateways, 21 smart switches and three smart hubs, along with four UPS units, 18 batteries, a locked tablet, Wi-Fi routers and security cameras.

Preliminary investigation suggests the setup was allegedly used to bypass telecom gateways, route international Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls as local cellular calls and mask the callers' identity. Police say cybercriminals allegedly used the infrastructure to run 'digital arrest' and extortion frauds across various states. These are police allegations at the investigation stage and have not been tested in court.

Hindi local reporting on the same operation said the raids were led by Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Kiran Yadav on the directions of Police Commissioner Tarun Gaba, and that teams also searched premises in the Gomtinagar area, taking the number of raided areas to five. The local reports put the number of SIM boxes recovered at about a dozen and said investigators were probing the network's alleged links to Gujarat, Assam and Goa.

Source: Media4Samachar

Officials said the seized hardware has been sent for forensic examination and efforts are under way to track down the handlers and beneficiaries of the illicit network, ANI reported. The agency's report did not give a figure for arrests in the SIM-box raids.