Kozhikode: The police probe team have begun steps to confiscate the property owned by the four absconding accused in the illegal telephone exchange case - Shabeer, Abdul Gafoor, Krishnaprasad and Niyas. The extreme action is being taken as they did not surrender before the police even after the High Court of Kerala asked them to do so.
District District Crime Branch or C-Branch Assistant Commissioner T P Sreejith gave a request to the Inspector General of Registration to furnish the details of the properties owned by all the four accused in the case.
Earlier, the Union Ministry of Communications had assessed a loss of crores of rupees for the Telecommunication Department due to the running of parallel telephone exchanges by the accused. In terms of registration itself, the loss has been pegged at Rs 2.5 crore
Of the six accused in the case, parallel exchange employee Jurais of Kundayithodu and Ibrahim Pullattil, who had supplied equipment needed for running the telephone exchange, were arrested by the police earlier.
The police have issued a lookout notice for finding out Niyas Kuttassety of Varagondu in Malappuram, who was made an accused in the case the other day. The lookout notice was issued after receiving reports that he had fled to Sharjah. A lookout notice had been issued earlier against other accused, who were absconding.
It was on July 1, 20121 that the police busted parallel telephone exchanges at seven centres in Kozhikode.
The police found that Ibrahim Pullattil, who is the main accused in a similar racket busted in Bengaluru, was the one who supplied equipment needed for launching parallel telephone exchanges in Kozhikode. His subsequent arrest and interrogation led to the police busting similar telephone exchanges in Ernakulam, Palakkad and Thrissur districts.
Ibrahim Pullattil gave a statement to the police that he sold 'call routers' to Pakistani national Muhammed Rahim, Bangladesh national Sahir and Chinese nationals Fly and Lee through the parallel telephone exchange.
