Though the trend is not new, it has increased manifold since the Centre laid down stringent guidelines to prevent misuse of SIM cards by militants.
The recent recovery of two Bangladeshi SIM cards and five mobile handsets from two Ulfa cadres, who are suspected to have been involved in the March 14 blast at Rajiv Bhawan in Guwahati and were arrested from Panbazar on Tuesday, has certainly set the alarm bells ringing.
Citing the recovery of the Bangladeshi SIM cards as just an example, a highly placed army source said they had concrete reports that rebels of the region were increasingly using SIM cards of foreign countries, including international roaming, to make it difficult for Indian security agencies to trace their location.
“The intelligence agencies in the region are worried about the easy availability of Bangladeshi, Myanmarese and Bhutanese SIM cards for a few hundred rupees in certain areas along the border,” he said.
According to him, it is a “trouble-free procedure” to obtain a SIM card of service providers like Bangladesh Gramin Phone Service in some areas along the border that states like Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and West Bengal share with the neighbouring country.
“Network of SIM cards of the above-mentioned countries even without international roaming is available within 10km to 20km on the Indian side of the border. Used by militants, this poses trouble for intelligence agencies because the identity and details of the caller cannot be traced as the service provider is in another country. To obtain the call details of such SIM, a lengthy and time-consuming international procedure is required,” he said.
According to him, this is a major factor that has led militants to change their track because many of their cadres were arrested after their locations were traced through electronic surveillance.
“Unlike in India, rules for procuring a SIM card are much easy and lax in some of our neighbouring countries, making it easy for militants to obtain a mobile phone connection by submitting fake documents. Moreover, there is no post-sale verification of the connections to ascertain who is actually using these,” the source said.
The Centre imposed strict rules on issuance of SIM cards by Indian cellular services operators after it was found that several mobile phone connections in the region were procured with fake identity papers and inevitably landed in the hands of militants and their linkmen.
“In some cases it was found that not only were the SIM cards purchased under fictitious names, the photographs in the application forms were also of innocent persons,” the source said.
The SIM cards thus procured had an infinite scope for misuse in militant hands.
“Modern mobile phones can do wonders for militants as these gadgets not only enable communication but can also record videos, take photographs, send it in the form of email attachment, check latest news updates, receive and send messages, point out exact geographical location and can even be used as a timer to trigger blasts,” the source said.
The fresh set of rules to be adhered to by Indian mobile service providers while issuing new mobile connections and verifying existing pre-paid mobile users in the Northeast aimed to ensure that SIM cards remained in the hands of genuine users.
Giving an example of the provisions of the new rules, the source said: “For instance, to get a mobile connection in the Northeast and Jammu and Kashmir, one will have to furnish documents such as driving licence, pan card, passport, arms licence, passbook of post offices or banks together with photograph as their identity and address proof.”
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