Bengal News Today: A woman from West Bengal, along with her husband, was playing with the security of the country. Due to one mistake of hers, innocent people were getting cheated of lakhs of rupees while sitting at home. She was running a business of selling SIM cards without documents.

A 24-year-old woman from Kestopur in North 24 Parganas, West Bengal, used to leave home for a few hours every afternoon. She used to go to poor areas and set up her cart there. Suddenly a crowd of people used to gather at her stall. This woman used to earn lakhs of rupees in a few hours and return back home. It might seem that the woman has a great startup business, which has made her a millionaire overnight, but it is not so. This woman was running a business of taking SIM cards in the name of poor people by cheating them and selling them to criminals.

The police team was shocked to see the scene inside this woman's house. 2,200 SIM cards, 15 biometric machines and 18 mobile phones were recovered from her house. This is considered to be the biggest case of SIM card recovery in Bengal. The woman was identified as Deblina Chakraborty. The detective department of Kolkata Police recovered 237 pre-activated SIM cards of different companies, five biometric machines and eight mobile phones from the spot while searching the woman. Police have arrested the woman's 28-year-old husband Anirban Saha (28) and close friend Ripan Saha (22) in this case.

SIMs used in digital arrest

According to the police, nine other people have also been arrested based on the clues received from the three. The SIM cards sold by Chakraborty were used to carry out at least 211 cyber crimes recently, ranging from digital arrests, fraud in the name of loans and hacking. Chakraborty's neighbours in Kestopur said that she would often go to the interiors of Mahisbathan, Baligari or Madhyamgram to sell SIM cards. Usha Ghosh, the owner of the house where she lived a year ago, said that she would leave in the morning and return late at night.

I4C had given input

Chakraborty often shifted from one rented house to another in the area. Ghosh said that last Wednesday at 6 am, the police entered the area to arrest her. Kolkata Police sources said that Chakraborty was tracked by several agencies, with the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Center (I4C) giving details of the crimes she was involved in. SIMs, OTPs sold to cyber fraudsters Deblina Chakraborty's modus operandi was simple.

She used to target slum dwellers by setting up a cart

According to the police, the woman used to set up prominent POS counters near slums, where it is a little easier to obtain KYC documents. She used to collect thumbprints from customers on the pretext of unsuccessful verification attempts. Their Aadhaar card and other details were taken. With the help of these details, she used to obtain SIM cards. Once she got the verified SIM card, she used to take the help of her Telegram channel to save it. She also rented SIM cards to cyber gangs operating from Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh. Joint CP (Crime and Traffic) Rupesh Kumar told the Times of India, "The items seized from Chakraborty's house include biometric authentication devices, which are used to fraudulently obtain fingerprint-based KYC data of unsuspecting individuals."