Bhubaneswar: A day after Twin City Police Commissioner Sanjeeb Panda divulged that the SIM boxes set up here and in Ranchi were directly controlled from Dhaka, a local court Friday granted police an additional two days of custody of the solitary accused arrested in the case, so far. Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Bhubaneswar Prateek Singh said accused Raju Mandal will be thoroughly interrogated by a special squad of the City police, NIA sleuths and Department of Telecom (DoT) officials during his custody to ferret out more details in the crucial investigation.
Earlier, the police had obtained five days remand of Mandal following his arrest August 17. Notably, the Commissionerate Police had sought a week’s remand of Mandal in the court to facilitate his intensive interrogation in this case amid suspicion that the conduits of the racket which has its tentacles spread across several countries were involved in cyber fraud or terrorist activities. The cops have also accessed the Call Data Records (CDR) of the SIMs that Mandal used in the SIM boxes. “DoT Officials have shared data of over 1,200 seized SIMs with us,” he added. An officer from Laxmisagar police station, which had detected the case, said the landlord who rented out his house to Mandal in Mahadev Nagar area has also been called for questioning in the case. “The quizzing of the landlord is likely to help us identify the persons who visited Mandal as well as their role, if any, in the case,” he added.
DEBADURLLAV HARICHANDAN, OP