A sessions court in Bhubaneswar on Wednesday convicted seven people, including five from Odisha, for procuring SIM cards under fake identities and sharing one-time passwords (OTPs) with Pakistani intelligence operatives.
The Sub-Divisional Judicial Magistrate (SDJM) court in Bhubaneswar sentenced them to three years of imprisonment and imposed a fine of ₹32,000 on each of them.
The convicts are Pritam Kar and Soumya Ranjan Pattanaik of Jajpur; Pathani Samanta Lenka, Saroj Kumar Nayak and Pradyumna Sahu of Nayagarh; Abhijit Sanjay of Pune; and Iqbal Hussain of Guwahati.
The Special Task Force (STF) of Odisha Police arrested the seven accused in May 2023. During the investigation, the STF found prime accused Lenka’s links with Pakistani intelligence agents, following which the National Security Act (NSA) was invoked against him.
The accused were in touch with Pakistani agents Danish Ali and Abdul Hamid. Odisha Police had sought the help of the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) in connection with the case. Despite repeated attempts, authorities in Pakistan did not share any information regarding the case with Odisha Police, officers said.
The Special Task Force had arrested them on charges of fraudulently procuring large numbers of pre-activated SIM cards in others’ names and selling the OTPs to Pakistani intelligence operatives and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agents in Pakistan and India for large sums of money.
The OTPs were misused to open online mule bank accounts and create accounts on social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook and Instagram, as well as on online shopping sites.
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