Buying a sim card, hitherto a fairly painless task, is set to get more complicated. In a high-level meeting convened by joint commissioners Himanshu Roy and Sadanand Date on Monday, the police laid down a new rule: that subscribers' addresses be physically verified before they are sold a sim card by mobile companies or retailers. They also suggested a number of additional security measures such as the setting up of CCTV in shops and recording the voices of subscribers when their sim cardswere activated.
"A huge number of sim cards are being bought under fictitious names to carry out terrorist activities in India," said Roy. "We asked mobile service providers to follow the telecom ministry's stringent guidelines prescribed on August 9, 2012."
Cops rue cell service providers' laxity
Joint police commissioners Himanshu Roy and Sadanand Date on Tuesday briefed mobile service companies on the government guidelines to prevent misuse of sim cards. The meeting was attended by the representatives of over a dozen mobile service providers.
Roy told the service providers that an extensive exercise had been carried out in 2010 to identify fictitious sim card subscribers from the existing databases. "We had registered criminal cases against those who provided fake addresses and a list of cards had been submitted to the service providers for deactivation," he said. "Unfortunately, while the cards were deactivated, the service providers did not initiate criminal proceedings against erring subscribers."
Service providers have now been asked to provide a comprehensive list of retailers across the metropolis. Roy said the police had proposed that CCTV be installed in all shops dealing in SIM cards; Date, on his part, asked service providers to record the voice of a subscriber when his or her SIM was activated . He warned that retailers found to be selling sim cards to those who used fictitious names would be blacklisted and a list of their names would be sent to all service providers.
Representatives of the service providers voiced their doubts about the CCTV suggestion, saying that economic constraints would make it difficult for most retailers to install a CCTV network in their shops.
"We have 7,000 retailers in the metropolis, and it will be a very costly affair," said one representative.
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