The Department of Telecom (DoT) said the sustained action against illegal telecom centres happened between April 2024 and October 2025, and was carried out in coordination with local law enforcement agencies.
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The Department of Telecom (DoT) “dismantled” 44 illegal telecom centres, including SIM box operations, across the country in the past two years, according to a Home Ministry report submitted in the Supreme Court.The DoT said the sustained action happened between April 2024 and October 2025, and was carried out in coordination with local law enforcement agencies.The Department was responding to a question from Attorney General R. Venkataramani during an Inter-Departmental Committee (IDC) meeting chaired by the Special Secretary (Internal Security) of the Ministry in March. The minutes of the meeting were part of the records annexed to a status report submitted by Mr. Venkataramani on behalf of the Union Government.The meeting was attended by representatives of Telecom Service Providers (TSPs), including Airtel, Vodafone-Idea, Reliance Jio and BSNL. The records were placed before the apex court in connection with a suo motu case on digital arrests and other cybercrimes.The Supreme Court hearings had flagged the misuse of telecom infrastructure for cyber-enabled financial crimes and the need for fraud management systems, which could proactively detect suspicious telecom usage patterns, like high call diversity, abnormally high outgoing calls, suspicious recharge patterns and unusual subscriber behaviour patterns.The IDC meeting emphasised the need to quickly block SIM cards identified with suspicious activations or cyber fraud. The Committee said that since SIMs used for crimes have a "very short" life span, the damage they cause could be drastically reduced by blocking them within two to three hours.The Ministry’s status report said the IDC had flagged gaps in data fields relating to point-of-sale (PoS) entities and SIM supply chains in the Digital Intelligence Platform (DIP), a DoT portal facilitating real-time information sharing among banks, police and telecom providers to combat cybercrimes and financial fraud.“The Committee emphasised that law enforcement agencies require complete traceability of SIM cards, including details of the PoS agent responsible for activation. It was observed that in several cases, critical fields such as PoS information or supply chain details were missing, which hampers investigation,” the meeting minutes recorded.The panel highlighted the DoT’s August 2023 circular, which required complete supply chain records of SIMs “from origin to activation”. The circular had called for the maintenance of real-time updates of SIM card movement and sharing of the complete trail of the SIM card supply chain to law enforcement agencies on request.The Committee also highlighted that instances continue to be reported where PoS vendors fail to follow the prescribed verification norms, leading to misuse of SIM cards in cyber-enabled financial frauds.“It was stressed that as per the DoT circular, TSPs are accountable for violations committed by their PoS vendors, and must institute effective mechanisms to ensure compliance,” the minutes said. Published - April 28, 2026 05:51 pm IST
