The Department of Telecommunication (DoT) has deactivated around 2.3 lakh mobile phone connections in Bihar and Jharkhand of the total 2.6 lakh flagged suspicious, officials said on Tuesday.
DoT special director general (DG) Girijesh Kumar Mishra said that it was done through the government’s artificial intelligence (AI)-based facial recognition software. This is the first time such an exercise had been undertaken using AI at the pan-India level. It will also help curtail cybercrime, said officials.
The DoT has blocked these numbers as they were procured with illegal documents, said Mishra
According to Mishra, among the mobile connections flagged as suspicious were those having similar photographs but different names on government identity (ID) documents furnished at the time of taking a mobile SIM; those having the same ID but different photograph; and even those having someone else’s ID and photograph by fabricating documents.
Also Read: 2,197 SIM cards issued on forged documents blocked, 13 arrested
Meanwhile, seven FIRs (first information report), involving around 350 points of sales (PoS) agents for laxity in issuing such mobile connections, have been registered by the Telecom service providers (TSPs) with the police.
“The TSPs have also de-franchised 2,904 PoS agents, based on our
findings, and they are in the process of lodging 500 FIRs against them. Some FIRs, like one by Vodafone Idea Ltd., involve 340 PoS agents,” Mishra said.
Bihar accounts for 87% of the 2.30 lakh disconnected mobile connections, while the remaining 13% are from Jharkhand. As many as 85% of the 2,904 PoS agents de-franchised are from Bihar, added Mishra.
The DoT detected 0.38% connections suspicious out of the 70 million mobile subscriber data it analysed in March against a total 110 million mobile subscriber base in Bihar and Jharkhand, officials said.
As many as 30,000 of the 2.60 lakh connections flagged suspicious were later found to be genuine after re-verification, said Mishra, adding the remaining were disconnected, Mishra said.
Mishra said that according to the data from DoT, one person was found to have 6,900 connections, while yet another had 5,200 connections. DoT used the AI algorithm on 870 million mobile connections, of which 40 lakh were flagged to be suspicious in India, he said.
According to Ashwini Vaishnaw, minister for communications, railways and electronics & information technology, more than 40 lakh fraudulent connections have been identified and more than 36 lakh such connections have been disconnected so far.
He made the remarks in New Delhi on Tuesday during the pan-India launch of the Sanchar Saathi, an integrated citizen-centric portal.
The portal allows mobile consumers to block or trace lost mobile phones, check the genuineness of devices while buying a new or old mobile phone, know the mobile connections issued in their name and get disconnected from the connections they do not require.
India has emerged as the second largest telecom ecosystem in the world with a subscriber base of 1,170.75 million (source: TRAI subscriber report of January 2023).
