Kathmandu, January 5

The Central Investigation Bureau of Nepal Police today said it recently raided an illegal Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) call centres operating from Samakhushi and Tahachal, and rounded up four persons, including a convict involved in telecommunications crime.

CIB officials also seized a huge cache of equipment used for bypassing international calls from their rented rooms.

The arrestees are Javed Khan (29) of Kathmandu, Diwakar Nakarmi (32) and Navinm Kayastha (24) of Sindhupalchowk and Jayaram Gautam (30) of Lalitpur.

Of them, Khan is the alleged mastermind of the VoIP racket and was on the run after Kathmandu District Court sentenced him two years in prison along with a fine of Rs 100,000 under the Telecommunications Act, 1997 on June 8, 2014.

CIB said Khan was found operating illegal VoIP centres even after being convicted by the court.

They had installed a Smart Switch in the illegal call centres to enable them ‘to power on and off’ the system through SMS without appearing there in person,’ which officials said was a new modus operandi of the racketeer.

The gang used to block telecom service providers’ legal gateway to bypass incoming international calls.