Crackdown on illegal internet providers in Noida, Ghaziabad

Apart from the relevant sections under the different laws, the operators will also be booked for forgery and cheating. One such operator had nearly 4,000 customers.

Teams of the Uttar Pradesh anti-terrorist squad (UP-ATS) and Telecom Enforcement, Resource and Monitoring (TERM) Cell raided illegal internet service providers in Ghaziabad, Greater Noida and Noida on Monday.

Officials said the operators who don’t have requisite licences are not only a threat to security but also causing huge loss to the exchequer.

According to UP-ATS officials, the raids were conducted at several premises under Mamura, Greater Noida, Khoda police station areas.

The team seized servers, switches, routers, mobile towers and account details of the illegal operators and also rounded over a dozen people for questioning.

“Initial investigation has shown that these operators were procuring services from bigger internet service providers (ISPs) who also had no licenses from department of telecommunication,” said Anup Singh, deputy superintendent of police (UP-ATS).

“In one of the instances, we came to know about such an ISP in Delhi. In all, we have arrested five people who were operating such illegal firms and providing internet and broadband services to customers in Ghaziabad, Greater Noida and Noida,” Singh said.

The officials said some of the firms against which action was taken are Bhoomi, Altranat, Advance net, Vanshika and Laxmi. Complaints have also been forwarded to Phase III, Sector-20, Khoda and Kasna police stations against the accused persons.

“Apart from the relevant sections under the different laws, the operators will also be booked for forgery and cheating. One such operator had nearly 4,000 customers. Since it is preliminary information, we estimate other illegal operators might have a similar number of clients,” Singh said.

The officials said to be an ISP one must have a licence from the Department of Telecommunications. They said the illegal operators also violated the monitoring and content blocking clauses, besides not adhering to regulations and security terms and conditions laid down under the law.