Dhaka: Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) has arrested a man Shafiqul Islam (35) with illegal VoIP business equipment in a raid in Lalmatia of Mohammadpur in the Bangladesh capital Dhaka.
Along more than one thousand Teletalk SIMs were recovered during the operation. The RAB says that the root of this illegal VoIP business is Saudi Arabian expatriates. He used to run this business from Saudi Arabia.
The joint operation of RAB and BTRC started on Tuesday (September 14) afternoon. Then at 8:15 pm, Commander Khandaker Al Moin, Director of the Legal and Media Wing of the RAB, gave details about the operation at the scene.
He said that on the basis of intelligence information, Shafiqul Islam was arrested along with a large quantity of illegal VoIP business equipment in a raid on his house in E-Block, Zakir Hossain Road, Lalmatia, Mohammadpur Shafiqul is the caretaker of that flat.
However, the main owner of the rescued equipment is a Saudi expatriate named Ali.
Although he was in exile, he used to run the VoIP business with three employees. Two out of three maintained the server. But they are now on the run.
He added that more than one thousand Teletalk SIMs have been recovered in the operation. Phone calls from the Middle East used this SIM to transact illegally. About Tk30 lakh VoIP equipment was recovered during the operation. 160 tools were transacted simultaneously using this tool.
In response to a question, Commander Khandaker Al Moin said the government was losing five crore taka in revenue every year due to illegal VoIP phone calls. The ring has been trading in illegal VoIP for the last one and a half years. As such, the government has lost seven to eight crore takas.
