Heavy penalty for fake SIM retailors, DoT to charge Rs 2 lakh per SIM

DoT is going to penalise the retailers selling fake SIM cards to customers with up to Rs 2 lakh fine per fake SIM card sold by them.

By Sunita On May 14, 2023 0

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is planning to impose stricter norms for retailers in order to curb the menace of fake SIM cards and financial fraud. These will include financial penalties, official sources said, which will be in addition to the existing provision under which criminal proceedings can be initiated against them.

DoT is planning to penalise the retailers breaching the guidelines with up to Rs 2 lakh fine per fake SIM card sold by them.During the investigation of financial fraud or fake SIM rackets, the retailer seems to be involved in the nexus as they issue multiple cards on forged documents and improper verification.

The new stricter rules will now need the retailers to sell the SIM cards to customers only after following proper KYC (know-your-customer) documentation, and agreement with telecom operators. The retailer also need to verify himself with the mandatory KYC of retailers every time he sells a card.

The new rules will also make it mandatory for SIM card sellers to maintain a unique ID across telecom operators on a pan-India basis while getting into an agreement to sell SIM cards.

The new rules will be notified after the proposed KYC norms, which will include complete use of digitally verified documents for issuance of SIM cards, reduction in the number of cards issued on a single ID to four from the current nine, imprisonment on misuse of SIM cards, among others.

The officials said that the KYC norms are ready and are expected to be notified soon. Both the KYC norms and PoS (point of sale) norms for SIM cards are expected to get a legal backing with the upcoming Telecom Bill.

The draft Telecom Bill already contains provisions related to imprisonment and penalties for violation of related norms, they said.

The Artificial Intelligence and Digital Intelligence Unit (AI & DIU) wing of DoT currently uses AI and facial recognition for telecom SIM subscriber verification (ASTR) technology to identify fraudulent SIM cards and block them.

The telecom department has been using the ASTR to help police across states to nab the fake SIM card holders. ASTR uses subscriber images provided by them in their customer acquisition forms (CAFs) and compares the same to similar images using facial recognition technology. The system detects the same image used by a subscriber under different names using forged documents. It also checks the address and other KYC details such as guardian’s name and date of birth.

In the last three months, the government using ASTR has blocked 835,000 SIM cards issued on fake IDs.

Last month, the government identified around 29,552 fake SIM cards using ASTR in Gujarat which were issued on forged documents. In 2022, DoT had blocked over 500,000 fake SIM cards using ASTR. DoT has disconnected 51,260 fake SIM cards of different telecom service providers in Odisha.

Apart from that, the telecom department has also deactivated in many cities and state of India. Around 2,25 lakh sim cards were deactivated in Bihar and Jharkhand combined. While 3,37,084 and 2,93,239 fake SIMs were disconnected in Madhya Pradesh and Gujurat.

Meanwhile, 6,70,992 SIMs have been deactivated in the Bengal circle and 1,58,920 more have been reported for reverification in the Kolkata circle.

(Source: The Financial Express)