4 months ago
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The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), arsenic portion of its ongoing Operation Chakra-V, connected Thursday (January 8, 2026) arrested an country income manager of a telecom work supplier (TSP) for the alleged amerciable merchantability of SIM cards that were utilized successful cybercrimes.
The bureau identified the accused arsenic “Binu Vidhyadharan, Vodafone Area Sales Manager, Delhi”.
In December 2025, the CBI detected an organised phishing web operating from areas astir Delhi and Chandigarh. It allegedly provided bulk SMS services to cybercriminals, including overseas actors targeting Indian citizens.
“The accused had procured astir 21,000 SIM cards successful usurpation of Department of Telecom rules for facilitating transmission of bulk SMS, utilized by cybercriminals for sending phishing messages. Three persons, including a transmission spouse of the TSP, were arrested successful December 2025 and are presently nether judicial custody,” the bureau said.
The alleged relation of Mr. Vidhyadharan came to airy during further investigation. The official, serving arsenic country income manager, was allegedly progressive successful facilitating the fraudulent issuance of SIM cards successful bulk. He arranged dummy individuals, falsely projecting them arsenic employees of Lord Mahavira Services India Private Limited, and submitted their documents to implicit the KYC formalities, the CBI said.
Members of a household residing successful Bengaluru were among those allegedly arranged by the authoritative and shown arsenic employees of the accused company. Copies of their Aadhaar cards were recovered from his possession. The SIM cards obtained done fraudulent means had been utilized for operating the phishing ecosystem exposed during the probe, arsenic alleged.
“Phishing is the archetypal cardinal measurement successful astir cyber frauds. It uses wide SMSes, calls, oregon messages to lure victims with mendacious offers of loans, investments, oregon threats,” the bureau said.
