SHILLONG: The District Police on Friday held a meeting with nodal sales officers of private mobile service providers including Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance, Idea and Aircel, at the SP’s Office, to take stock of illegal sale of SIM Cards in the black market which has helped to facilitate several crimes like criminal intimidation, extortion, unsolicited calls and SMSes to women and kidnapping causing inconvenience and anxiety to the public at large.
In the meeting, it was decided that all new SIM Card subscribers should be physically verified by the retailer and photograph submitted by the applicant should match the subscriber who appears in person.
Applicants will have to sign their photographs before handing them over to the retailer to prevent misuse.
Affixing of photographs must be done by the retailer at the outlet itself before forwarding the same to the distributor to prevent misuse of photographs. It was also decided that all copies of supporting documents submitted by the applicant, like EPIC, should be self-attested by the subscriber. Besides, in order to overcome the problem of location of the subscriber due to generic addresses given, detailed address of the subscriber has to be provided including sub locality and landmarks, if possible.
East Khasi Hills Superintendent of Police, M. Kharkrang, later said that the retailer should get the reference number of the subscriber and the same has to be verified both at the retail outlet and by the verifying agency.
He stated that all service providers will prepare a format of the records which must be maintained by the retailer in the form of a register and inspected by the sales wing of the service provider from time to time.
He also made it clear that issue of SIM cards without documents will invite cognizable and non-bailable sections of the law against those issuing the cards.
In addition, all OCs & ICs of police stations and police outposts have been directed to call a meeting with the SIM card retailers to enforce the guidelines.
